The Comfort of Lies (7 page)

She held back her sigh, dreading the extra time making the batter, dragging out the waffle iron, and, with a working woman’s guilt, heating the damned syrup.

“Okay—you clean, I’ll make waffles.” She pulled her robe tighter as she left and walked downstairs.

No whipped cream, though.

The number on the scale had crept up again that morning. She could hear her mother’s lecture on metabolism after forty.

She opened the front door to fine mist and damp newspapers. Four years after moving, Juliette still missed their Waltham paper delivery guy who’d wrap them in plastic at the slightest hint of wetness.

She lifted out yesterday’s mail still piled in the oversized bowl on the hall table and replaced it with the newspapers, where they could dry without getting wetness on the wooden top. Last night she and Nathan had both arrived home late, which meant rushing to prepare dinner, helping the boys with homework, and answering too many phone calls and emails. Email had overtaken postal deliveries in importance. Unless there was a package, she expected little but magazines and bills.

Emerson College alumni bulletin for her.

Contexts
for Nathan. The magazine claimed it made sociology “interesting and relevant to anyone interested in how society operates,” so why did Juliette always pick up
Vogue
instead?

Junk mail for Nathan. Junk mail for her.

American Express bill.

Last in the pile was a hand-addressed letter forwarded from their Waltham address. The return address was Jamaica Plain. It had been sent to Nathan.

She recognized the last name.

Adagio.

Jesus Christ.

Tia Genevieve Adagio. Such a pretty name. She’d forced that name from Nathan. “Tell me her name!” she’d screamed. “Tell me, goddamn it! I’m sure she knows mine.”

Juliette almost crushed the envelope. She should give it to Nathan. Didn’t she trust him now? They were doing so well. The act of giving it to him would strengthen the confidence they’d regained. He’d open it in front of her. That was the right thing to do.

After closing her eyes and praying she’d find an innocent, forgivable reason for the contact (“I’m dying and must say good-bye!”), Juliette slit open the envelope.

Pictures slid out and then a letter. A somber little girl stared at Juliette.

Dear Nathan,

This is our daughter. Her adoptive parents send photos each year after her birthday (March 6). As you can see, she resembles you.

They named her Savannah (I know, it’s an awful name; in my mind she’s Honor—the name I gave her at birth), but they’re good people. Caroline and Peter Fitzgerald. She is a doctor; he has a software company. They live in Dover. (I know you will wonder. I do know you.) They will always love and care for her.

I expect our daughter will call me someday. At her birth, I arranged things to allow this future contact to happen easily. I expect that if she calls, she will ask about you. I plan to help her get in touch if that’s her wish.

Tia

Juliette stared at the child, gripping the photos with icy fingers. She placed her other hand on her chest, trying to slow her rapid, shallow breaths.

Did he know he had this child, this daughter? Tia had written “This is our daughter” as though it were a given fact. We. Have. A. Daughter.

Had he seen her, spoken to her? Had they had any contact since Nathan’s confession? Please, God, please let the answers be no.

“Mom!” Max called down the stairs.
“Mom!”
he repeated when she didn’t respond.

Juliette shoved the letter and pictures back in the envelope and stuck it into her bathrobe pocket. “I’m right here, Max, you don’t have to scream.” Her words sounded muted, despite the fact that she’d yelled, just as she’d told Max not to scream.

Max’s head appeared over the stair railing of the second floor. “Where are my blue sweats? Did you remember that I have practice?”

Juliette twisted her wedding ring and willed the pounding in her chest to subside. “Left side of the closet, hanging beside your denim jacket.”

He grunted his version of thanks.

“And shower before you get dressed,” Juliette nagged on autopilot. She straightened the mail until it was piled in size order, trying to think about anything other than the envelope pressing against her hip.

She stumbled into the kitchen.

The pictures, the resemblance to Max, to Nathan—for a moment, she thought she’d choke on her rising fury. Memories of her husband’s betrayal rushed through her until there seemed to be room only for anger. A daughter? How could her husband have not told her?

Tia’s letter didn’t say, “You have a child.” Or “I never told you I was pregnant, but . . . ”

Yet she hadn’t known that they’d moved.

What did he know? What did they know together? What else had
they hidden from her? Memories of being left out, of Nathan and that woman as a couple while she floundered in the dark, threatened to drown her.

Not many miles away, Nathan’s daughter was waking, or having breakfast, or maybe getting ready for preschool. A child of his that wasn’t hers.

Surely her eyes would give away her distress. Blinking, squeezing back tears, she stumbled toward the table and sat on the hard kitchen chair. Once sitting, she dug her nails hard into her thighs. She had to calm down somehow, or the children, Nathan, would read her in a minute.

Breathe deep.

What could be more of a betrayal than having a child with another woman?

Dissociate.

Not telling her: didn’t that say his loyalty was more to that woman than to her?

Think about this later. Figure this out later.

She needed to find out more of the facts before opening herself to lies from Nathan.

Juliette was well schooled in keeping her own counsel. Growing up with a mother whose version of “Good morning” was “You are not wearing that ugly outfit to school” gifted her with an enduring ability to maintain a calm front. Her mother thrived on knocking self-pity and crying out of Juliette, so early on she learned techniques for preventing tears.

Soon Lucas, always first, would stomp down the stairs, ready to eat a ridiculously large amount of whatever she offered. He combusted calories impossibly fast. He’d grown taller than his father this year. Nathan pretended not to notice, but Juliette saw how often her husband looked as though he were stretching toward greater height when next to Lucas.

Screw the waffles. She pulled eight eggs from the fridge. Four for Lucas, two for Nathan—a burst of rage took her breath away—and two for Max.

Focus on food.

Max was built husky like Nathan, with a similarly sluggish engine.

Don’t think about the letter.

Juliette’s metabolism had once burned fast. No longer. Now she wrestled her lust for bubbling pans of macaroni and cheese topped with crisped, buttery crumbs.

Had pregnancy broadened Tia? So tiny she’d been, when Juliette found a way to see her, needing to put a face in her nightmares.

Food. Stick to breakfast.

Nathan’s lust for food was broader than Juliette’s. He hungered for steak and for things soft, sweet, and savory. Juliette could make him weak with her cheddar biscuits. She should poison a batch for him.

Was he still seeing Tia? It didn’t seem so from the letter. But who knew? Who really knew one’s husband? Once she would have said she did, but no more.

Nathan thirsted for his students’ awe. Juliette knew that. They treated her husband like a minor rock star, with his exciting politics and edgy lectures, and he held his face to the attention like a flower to the sun.

Lucas slid into the kitchen moments before the last bit of egg transformed from liquid to solid. Juliette sprinkled in shredded cheddar and then scrambled the last bits.

“Juice is on the table,” she said even as Lucas picked up his glass. He grabbed a handful of raspberries from a dish on the table.

“Sit when you eat,” Juliette ordered. Motherhood was little more than a series of repetitive commands and tasks these days. She remembered the moments when Max switched from holding her finger, to slipping his hand into hers, and then to rejecting her touch.

“Why are mothers so keen on these things?” Nathan walked in carrying their three newspapers. Oh, he was so important, the sociology professor—of course he must have the
New York Times
, the
Boston Globe
, and the
Wall Street Journal
.

Lucas surprised Juliette by picking up the slack when she didn’t answer Nathan, perhaps discomforted by her unusual reticence. “What things?” he asked.

“Things like requiring sons to sit when eating, as though vitamins and minerals can be fully absorbed only when they’re in proscribed positions.” Nathan grinned at his all-American athletic blond son, at Juliette. He swiveled, seeking the missing Max.

Nathan held out his arms for an embrace. Juliette held the blistering frying pan between them.

“Hot. Watch out,” she warned. “This is heavy.”

Nathan looked puzzled. He leveled hurt eyes at her. They were close in height. His mournful dark eyes, refugee eyes, velvety full-of-shit eyes, met hers. “Is something wrong?”

She slammed the pan on the wooden block protecting their table, their precious Fairfield Antique Show table. She slid his portion of eggs onto his plate.

“Whole wheat toast,” she said. “I protect your heart, Nathan. No seeds; you don’t like seeds.” She slammed a platter on the table. “And I warm the toast plate each morning. Did you know that, Nathan?”

“Umm, it’s great, Mom.” Lucas, her poor, confused boy. “Thanks.”

Nathan, apparently stunned into silence, reached for the pitcher of juice.

“Put the dishes in the sink when you’re done,” she said. “Make sure Max eats his eggs. Tell him I didn’t have time for waffles.”

“Aren’t you eating?” Nathan asked. “Where are you going so early?”

“I lost my appetite. Work.” She began walking out and then turned. “I love you guys.” She couldn’t confuse Lucas by making her love sound specific to him and not their father. Besides, she did love them all; she just prayed that love didn’t damn her to a life of turning a blind eye.

Juliette climbed the stairs to her bedroom, grabbed clothes, and brought them into the bathroom. After locking the door, she turned on the faucet, fell on the rug, and wrapped her arms around herself
tight and rocked. She gripped her upper arms hard enough to leave red marks.

She’d thought it was over: the heartache, the mistrust, watching him for signs of deceit each time he walked in the house. For such a long time, she’d wondered if he was simply riding the comfort of his own lies when he’d promise the bad times were all behind them.

There had been too many threads she hadn’t wanted to cut: children, the world they’d built together, and, of course, love. She never stopped loving him. Forgiving him became her best choice.

She’d finally let go and believed him.

Now Juliette spun right back to asking herself why. Why had he slept with another woman? She’d revered him for the judgement and rectitude she’d believed he possessed.

Tia’s huge orphan eyes had probably begged her husband for love and protection. She must have been exactly the right ticket when Nathan tired of his über-competent wife, good at so many things. Perfect Juliette: providing gourmet meals and mother-of-the-year nurturing, spicking-and-spanning his house. She even brought in more money than he did these days. The idea that he’d turned to that girl because his ego needed lifting drove Juliette insane. She’d always thought so much more of Nathan.

How dare that woman spread her name, cool as aloe, right across the envelope for the world and Juliette to see, as though Juliette didn’t know who she was. As though Juliette hadn’t once followed her for five shameful nights.

Tia Genevieve Adagio. Silky girl, sliding over Juliette’s husband like Salome. Slippery like a baby seal, all dark and tiny, fragile, needy girl, looking up at Juliette’s husband as though Nathan supplied the oxygen she breathed.

And now they had a daughter? More than anything else, this knowledge shut out Juliette. Suddenly Tia and Nathan were the couple, while Juliette pressed herself up to the glass of their secret family.

 • • • 

Juliette drove up Central Street and parked in the small lot behind the shop. The back as well as the front entrance was marked with their full name: juliette&gwynne//flush de la beauté. They’d wanted to open their shop on a street rife with beauty and flush with money. Gwynne chose the moneyed zip code of Wellesley’s suburban main street for their location, and Juliette had come up with the name, confident that women would fling money at anything French. Juliette created products. Gwynne managed the business. They were synchronized as friends and business partners. When Gwynne sneezed, Juliette grabbed a tissue.

That’s why she had to stay in the car for a few minutes. Juliette was transparent to Gwynne, and Juliette didn’t want her friend reading her mind.

Gwynne would scare the shit out of Juliette if they weren’t best friends. Besides having four daughters ages six to thirteen, a solid marriage, and the dancer’s body that Juliette’s mother wanted for Juliette, Gwynne was smart and funny. Thankfully, she had a wide streak of neurotic self-doubt and anxiety that required a steady diet of predawn runs, Effexor, and an occasional sleeping pill, enabling Juliette to keep her envy in check.

Juliette, privy to the secrets of the privileged, wondered why so many lovely women thought they were garbage. She slipped the envelope from her purse. A light rain fell, pleasing Juliette, offering safety in the confines of her car, hiding her from the world for at least that moment.

She fingered the cheap paper.

The cheap envelope.

Stationery and matching envelopes waited in Juliette’s desk, something to suit any mood. Thick paper so rich it caressed the ink. Ivory. Dove grey. Palest blue. None right for the letter she’d send to Tia. For that, Juliette would go to Walgreens and buy ninety-nine-cent crap in blaring white.