Big Little Lies (19 page)

“Yes,” said Celeste. “I could actually do anything right now because he still feels so bad about what happened the last time. With the Legos. So right now everything is great. Better than great. That’s the problem, see. It’s so good right now, it’s almost . . .”

She stopped.

“Worth it,” finished Susi. “It’s almost worth it.”

Celeste met Susi’s raccoon eyes. “Yes.”

The blandness of Susi’s gaze said nothing at all except,
Got it.
She wasn’t being kind and maternal, and she wasn’t reveling in the delicious superiority of her own kindness. She was just getting the job done. She was like that brisk, efficient lady at the bank or the telephone company who just wants to do her job and untangle that knotty problem for you.

They sat in silence for a moment. Outside the office door, Celeste could hear the murmur of voices, the ringing of a telephone and the distant sounds of traffic passing on the street outside. A sense of peace washed over her. The sweat on her face cooled. For five years, ever since it had begun, she’d been living her life with this secret shame draped so heavily over her shoulders, and for just a moment it lifted and she remembered the person she used to be. She still had no solution, no way out, but for just this moment she was sitting opposite someone who understood.

“He will hit you again,” said Susi. That detached professionalism again. No pity. No judgment. It wasn’t a question. She was stating a fact to move the conversation forward.

“Yes,” said Celeste. “It will happen again. He’ll hit me. I’ll hit him.”

It will rain again. I will get sick again. I will have bad days. But can’t I enjoy the good times while they last?

But then why am I here at all?

“So what I’d like to talk about is coming up with a plan,” said Susi. She flipped over a page on her clipboard.

“A plan,” said Celeste.

“A plan,” said Susi. “A plan for next time.”

H
ave you ever wanted to experiment with that, what’s it called, erotic asphyxiation?” said Madeline to Ed as they lay in bed. He had his book. She had the iPad.

It was the night after she’d taken the cardboard over to Jane’s place. She’d been thinking about Jane’s story all day.

“Sure. I’m up for it. Let’s give it a shot.” Ed took off his glasses and put down his book, turning to her with enthusiasm.

“What? No! Are you kidding?” said Madeline. “Anyway, I don’t want sex. I ate too much risotto for dinner.”

“Right. Of course. Silly of me.” Ed put his glasses back on.

“And people accidentally kill themselves doing that! They die all the time! It’s a very dangerous practice, Ed.”

Ed looked at her over the top of his glasses.

“I can’t believe you wanted to choke me,” said Madeline.

He shook his head. “I was just trying to show my willingness to accommodate.” He glanced at her iPad. “Are you looking up ways to spice up our sex life or something?”

“Oh God no,” said Madeline, with perhaps too much feeling.

Ed snorted.

She looked at the Wikipedia entry for erotic asphyxiation. “So apparently when the arteries on either side of the neck are compressed, you get a sudden loss of oxygen to the brain so you go into a semi-hallucinogenic state.” She considered it. “I’ve noticed whenever I’ve got a head cold, I often feel quite amorous. That might be why.”

“Madeline,” said Ed. “You have never been amorous when you had a head cold.”

“Really?” said Madeline. “Maybe I just forgot to mention it.”

“Yeah, maybe you did.” He went back to reading his book again. “I had a girlfriend who was into it.”

“Seriously? Which one?”

“Well, maybe she wasn’t theoretically a girlfriend. More like a random girl.”

“And this random girl wanted you to . . .” Madeline put her hands around her own throat, stuck her tongue out the side of her mouth and made choking noises.

“Goddamn, that looks sexy when you do that,” said Ed.

“Thanks.” Madeline dropped her hands. “So did you do it?”

“Sort of halfheartedly,” said Ed as he took off his glasses. He grinned to himself, remembering. “I was a bit drunk. I was having trouble following instructions. I remember she was disappointed with me, which I know you probably find impossible to fathom, but I didn’t always thrill and delight—”

“Yes, yes.” Madeline waved him quiet and looked back at her iPad.

“So why the sudden interest in erotic asphyxiation?” said Ed.

She told him Jane’s story and watched the tiny muscles around his jaw flicker and his eyes narrow, the way they did when he heard a story on the news about a child being hurt.

“Bastard,” he said finally.

“I know,” said Madeline. “And he just gets away with it.”

Ed shook his head. “Silly, silly girl.” He sighed. “These sort of men just prey on—”

“Don’t call her a silly girl!” Madeline sat up so fast, the iPad slipped off her legs. “That sounds like you’re blaming her!”

Ed held up his hand as if to ward her off. “Of course I’m not. I just meant—”

“What if it were Abigail or Chloe?” cried Madeline.

“I actually
was
thinking of Abigail and Chloe,” said Ed.

“So you’d blame them, would you? Would you say, ‘You silly girl, you got what you deserved’?”

“Madeline,” said Ed calmly.

Their arguments always went like this. The angrier Madeline got, the more freakishly calm Ed became, until he reached a point where he sounded like a hostage negotiator dealing with a lunatic and a ticking bomb. It was infuriating.

“You’re
blaming the victim
!” She was thinking of Jane sitting in her cold, bare little apartment, the expressions that had crossed her face as she shared her sad, sordid little story, the
shame
she so obviously still felt all these years later. “I have to take responsibility,” she’d said. “It wasn’t that big a deal.” She thought of the photo Jane had showed her. The open, carefree expression on her face. The red dress. Jane once wore bright colors! Jane once had cleavage! Now Jane dressed her bony body apologetically, humbly, like she wanted to disappear, like she was trying to be invisible, to make herself nothing. That man had done that to her.

“It’s all fine and dandy for you to sleep with
random
women, but when a woman does, it’s
silly
. That’s a double standard!”

“Madeline,” said Ed. “I was not blaming her.”

He was still speaking in his I’m-the-grown-up-you’re-the-crazy-one voice, but she could see a spark of anger in his eyes.

“You are! I can’t believe you would say that!” The words bubbled
out of her. “You’re like those people who say, ‘Oh, what did she expect? She was drinking at one o’clock in the morning, so of course she deserved to be raped by the whole football team!’”

“I am not!”

“You are so!”

Something changed in Ed’s face. His face flushed. His voice rose.

“Let me tell you this, Madeline,” he said. “If my daughter goes off one day with some wanker she’s only just met in a hotel bar, I reserve the right to call her
silly
!”

It was stupid for them to be fighting about this. A rational part of her mind knew this. She knew that Ed didn’t really blame Jane. She knew her husband was actually a better, nicer person than she was, and yet she couldn’t forgive him for that “silly girl” comment. It somehow
represented
a terrible wrong. As a woman, Madeline was obliged to be angry with Ed on Jane’s behalf, and for every other “silly girl,” and for herself, because after all, it could have happened to her too, and even a soft little word like “silly” felt like a slap.

“I can’t be in the same room as you right now.” She hopped out of bed, taking the iPad with her.

“Be ridiculous, then,” said Ed. He put his glasses back on. He was upset, but Madeline knew that he would read his book for twenty minutes, turn off the light and fall instantly asleep.

Madeline closed the door firmly (she would have preferred to slam it, but she didn’t want the kids waking up) and marched down the stairs in the dark.

“Don’t hurt your ankle on the stairs!” called out Ed from behind the door. He was already over it, thought Madeline.

She made herself a cup of chamomile tea and settled down on the couch. She hated chamomile tea, but it was supposedly soothing and calming and whatever, so she was always trying to make herself drink it. Bonnie only drank herbal tea, of course. According to Abigail, Nathan avoided caffeine now too. This was the problem with children
and marriage breakups. You got all this information about your ex-husband that you would otherwise never know. She knew, for example, that Nathan called Bonnie his “bonnie Bon.” Abigail had mentioned this in the kitchen one day. Ed, who had been standing behind her, silently stuck his finger down his throat, making Madeline laugh, but still, she could have done without hearing that. (Nathan had always been into alliteration; he used to call her his “mad Maddie”—not quite as romantic.) Why had Abigail felt the need to share those sorts of things? Ed thought it was deliberate, that she was trying to bait Madeline, to purposely hurt her, but Madeline didn’t believe that Abigail was that malicious.

Ed always saw the worst in Abigail these days.

That’s what was behind her sudden fury with him in the bedroom. It wasn’t really anything to do with the “silly girl” comment. It was because she was still angry with Ed over Abigail moving in with Nathan and Bonnie, because the more time that passed, the more likely it seemed that it
was
Ed’s fault. Maybe Abigail had been teetering on the edge of her decision, playing around with the idea but not really seriously considering it, and Ed’s “calm down” comment had been just the shove she’d needed. Otherwise she’d still be here. It might have just been a passing phase. Teenagers did that. Their moods came and went.

Lately, Madeline’s mind had been so filled with memories of the days when it was just her and Abigail that she sometimes had the strangest feeling that Ed, Fred and Chloe were interlopers. Who were these people? It was like they’d marched into Madeline and Abigail’s life with all their noise and their stuff, their noisy computer games and their fighting, and they’d driven poor Abigail away.

She laughed at the thought of how outraged Fred and Chloe would be if they knew she dared question their existence, especially Chloe. “But where
was
I?” she always demanded when she looked at old photos of Madeline and Abigail. “Where was Daddy? Where was
Fred?” “You were in my dreams,” Madeline would say, and it was true. But they weren’t in Abigail’s dreams.

She sipped her tea and felt the anger slowly drain from her body. Nothing to do with the stupid tea.

Really it was that man’s fault.

Mr. Banks. Saxon Banks.

An unusual name.

She rested her fingertips on the cool, smooth surface of the iPad.

“Don’t Google him,” Jane had begged, and Madeline had promised, so this was very wrong, but the desire to see the bastard was so irresistible. It was like when she read a story about a crime, she always wanted to see the offender, to study his or her face for signs of evil. (She could always find them.) And it was so easy, just a few keystrokes in that little rectangle, it was like her fingers were doing it without her permission and, while she was still deciding whether or not to break her promise, the search results were already on the screen in front of her, as if Google were an extension of her mind and she only had to think of it for it to happen.

She would just take a very, very quick look, she’d just skim it with her eyes, and then she’d close the page and delete all references to Saxon Banks from her search history. Jane would never know. It wasn’t like Madeline could do anything about him. She wasn’t going to plan some elaborate, satisfying revenge (although, already part of her mind had split off and was traveling down that path: Some sort of scam? To steal his money? To publicly humiliate or discredit him? There must be a way.)

She double-clicked, and one of those well-lit corporate head shots filled her screen. A property developer called Saxon Banks based in Melbourne. Was that him? A strong-jawed, classically handsome man with a pleased-with-himself smirk and eyes that seemed to look straight into Madeline’s in a combative, bordering on aggressive way.

“You prick,” said Madeline out loud. “You think you can do whatever you want to whomever you choose, don’t you?”

What would she have done in Jane’s situation? She couldn’t imagine herself reacting the way Jane had. Madeline would have slapped him. She wouldn’t have been undone by the words “fat” and “ugly,” because her self-confidence about her looks was too high, even when she was nineteen—or especially when she was nineteen. She got to decide how she looked.

Perhaps this man specifically picked out girls who he knew would be vulnerable to his insults.

Or was this line of thought just another form of victim-blaming?
This wouldn’t have happened to me. I would have fought. I wouldn’t have stood for it. He wouldn’t have shattered my self-respect.
Jane had been completely vulnerable at the time, naked, in his bed, silly girl.

Madeline caught herself. “Silly girl.” She’d just thought exactly the same thing as Ed. She’d apologize in the morning. Well, she wouldn’t apologize out loud, but she might make him a soft-boiled egg, and he’d get the message.

She studied the photo again. She couldn’t see a resemblance to Ziggy. Or, actually, maybe she could? Perhaps a little around the eyes. She read the little biography next to his photo. Bachelor of this, masters of that, member of the Institute of whatever, blah, blah, blah.
In his
spare time Saxon enjoys sailing, rock climbing and spending time with his wife and three young daughters.

Madeline winced. Ziggy had three half sisters.

Madeline knew this now. She knew something she shouldn’t know, and she couldn’t un-know it. She knew something about Jane’s own son that Jane herself didn’t know. She hadn’t just broken a promise, she’d violated Jane’s privacy. She was a tacky little voyeur poking about the Internet, digging up photos of Ziggy’s father. She’d been angered by what had happened to Jane, but part of her had almost relished the story, hadn’t she? Hadn’t she almost
enjoyed
feeling
outraged over Jane’s sad, sordid little sex story? Her sympathy came from the superior, comfy position of someone with a life in proper middle-class order: a husband, a home, a mortgage. Madeline was just like some of her mother’s friends, who had been so excitedly sympathetic when Nathan left her and Abigail. They were sad and outraged for her, but in such a tut-tut-that’s-oh-so-terrible way that left Madeline feeling brittle and defensive, even as she genuinely appreciated the home-cooked casseroles that were solemnly placed on her kitchen table.

Madeline stared into Saxon’s face, and he seemed to stare back at her with knowing eyes, as if he knew every despicable thing there was to know about her. A wave of revulsion rushed over her, leaving her feeling clammy and shaky.

A scream sliced like a sword through the house’s sleepy silence: “Mummy! Mummy, Mummy, Mummy!”

Madeline leapt to her feet, her heart hammering, even though she already knew it was just Chloe having another one of her nightmares.

“Coming! I’m coming!” she called as she ran down the hallway. She could fix this. She could so easily fix this, and it was such a relief, because Abigail didn’t want or need her anymore, and there were evil people like Saxon Banks out there in the world waiting to hurt Madeline’s children, in big ways and small ways, and there wasn’t a damned thing she could do about it, but at least she could drag that monster out from under Chloe’s bed and kill it with her bare hands.