The Glass Wives (3 page)

Sam’s head rested on the padded arm of the sectional, his legs curled against his chest. He was gangly for a ten-year-old. Richard and Evie always remarked on the twins’ long limbs, glad they inherited that trait from Richard’s side of the family. One day Sam would reach things on the top shelves, while his mother—all five feet four of her—would still have to hunt for the step stool. Sophie was tall too, and Evie could see the outline of her daughter’s long legs under the blanket as she lay on an air mattress at the other end of the couch. If she stretched, Evie could reach down and twirl her fingers in Sophie’s long, light brown curls that were just like Lisa’s.

Cuddling up alone in a static-ridden White Sox blanket, Evie reveled in the silence, marred only by the occasional crackle of the disintegrating logs. To entice sleep, she tried replaying her favorite movies and TV show episodes in her head, the chatter from three days of polite conversations filtered through her personal reruns.

She’d long ago settled into a coveted place of indifference with Richard—that convenient cubbyhole that had emerged after the hatred had dissolved. But now, bad memories bubbled to the surface. Evie pushed them back. She and Richard hadn’t bickered in years. Their lives were pleasantly linked by the twins—and legally linked by automatic support payments—but not by emotions or broken promises. They tag-teamed for soccer games and cochaperoned field trips.

Then, she saw Richard’s face. Not just ex-husband Richard’s face, but the face of the twenty-five-year-old she’d fallen in love with. She couldn’t deny Richard’s good looks even postdivorce because Sam looked just like him. Yes, she’d focus on that, as it had been a long time since she’d thought of Richard’s face as sweet
or
kind.

Evie flipped from one side to the other, struggling to find a comfortable spot where she didn’t feel a gap in the cushions against her lower back. Her eyes burned but she couldn’t sleep, probably because it was ten o’clock. With the blanket wrapped around her shoulders, Evie tiptoed into the kitchen and by the glow of her cell phone called Scott. Voice mail. He was probably in the shower or reading a book he couldn’t put down until the end of the chapter. She tried his landline. Voice mail again.

“It’s me,” she said. “I tried your cell too … just wanted to thank you for the other day. For coming to shiva.”
You don’t thank people for coming to shiva.
Evie didn’t know why, but she knew it was a Jewish faux pas, one of those things Bubbe had mandated. Scott probably knew that rule too. “I mean, I just wanted to touch base since we haven’t talked since shiva. Well, okay, call me when you get this … um … talk to you soon…” She stopped short of adding, “Love ya.”

What if it had been Scott who died instead of Richard? Evie’s hand smacked her mouth and it stayed there.

When her cell phone buzzed, Evie’s heart leapt, her face exploding into a broad smile. She held her phone tight with both hands and looked at the screen. Her mood sank when she saw Richard’s number.
What did he want now?
Then burnt hot dog lurched into her throat, coating it with reality. It couldn’t be Richard. It had to be Nicole. Evie tapped
DECLINE
.

Evie tried to fall asleep for another hour. She’d have to go upstairs to get any rest with the twins’ resonant snoring. The sound was in direct contrast to the way they looked when they slept—peaceful, cherubic faces, fluttering, long eyelashes, and twitching, drooling smiles. Such sleep belied her tweens’ fondness for video games, anime, basketball, and soccer. Mothering was easier when they loved
Dora the Explorer
and zwieback toast. Goopy, slimy zwieback toast. When a baby wipe cleaned every mess, kisses healed every hurt, and when a pinkie-swear sealed every promise.

*   *   *

Light trickled in the window and poked Evie in the eye. She was on top of her comforter and propped up on three pillows. Her eyes focused on Sam and Sophie, back-to-back at the foot of the bed, playing handheld video games on silent. Evie hadn’t even felt them climb on.

She cleared her throat, and the twins wiggled over to her. They fell into a family hug. “You’ll be okay,” she whispered, reassuring herself and, by default, Sam and Sophie. “I promise with all my heart.” She alternated her words with light kisses on their ears.

She had said the same thing more than three years before, on a day Evie prepared for with military precision. With the word
divorce,
the twins’ shrieks of terror had ripped through her. Yet they had made it through okay—not great or amazing, but okay. But with no warning, no court dates, no list of pros and cons, there had been no way for Evie to prepare herself—or Sam and Sophie—for Richard’s death. It had been a dark, snowy December night in northern Lake County when his car slid on black ice during a sharp turn and smashed into a guardrail.

“He couldn’t have seen it,” the police officer said.

“On impact,” the doctor added.

Impact, indeed.

*   *   *

A week’s worth of mail stuck out of the basket hanging on the kitchen wall. Evie reached, then pulled back her hand. The mail could wait. She wasn’t going to ruin her coffee refuge by opening bills. With the kids still tucked in her bed and glued to their games, she just wanted a little peace and quiet and coffee. She’d sort through the mess later with a fully caffeinated tank on board. In the meantime, Evie pulled out a few catalogs and tossed them into the recycle bin. It was less daunting without the bulk.

As if on cue, Beth tapped on the back door. Still locked—which was unusual. Evie let her in. Beth patted the tops of Tupperware containers and foil-wrapped plates as if she were playing bongos, which would have been a sight in her North Face jacket and leather gloves. Evie smiled so wide her cheeks stretched.

“People dropped off more food at my house for you,” Beth said, stacking them on the kitchen counter.

Death was horrifying enough, but death and hunger would be a
shanda
, a disgrace. The amount of food delivered was directly proportional to the level of fear engulfing each Lakewood family. The more they cooked, baked, and delivered, the less likely this would happen to someone else they knew. At this rate, Lakewood residents would live forever.

“Let’s sit,” Evie said, as if it were a novel idea.

Laney emerged from the front hall. Thank goodness for a friend with her own key. Any other day she’d have come through the back door, and any other day she’d have been stunning. But this day Laney wore mismatched sweats with a clip holding a clump of her curls.

Dead ex-husband and frumpy, front-door Laney—Evie’s personal apocalypse.

“Where are the kids?” Laney asked.

“Upstairs, why?”

“We need to rehash shiva.”

“No, we do not,” Beth said.

“Being there was enough rehashing for me,” Evie said.

“Nothing bad, just, well, a lot of people showed up every day. It was nice. As nice as a shiva can be, I mean.”

Beth opened a box with more force than was needed. “Why are you surprised? I know you had a problem with Richard, but not everyone did. And, anyway, people do what’s right in a situation like this. You did.”

“I did it for Evie and the kids.”

“So did I.” Beth was annoyed, put her hands on Evie’s shoulders, and shifted her away from Laney.

Laney drummed the side of a box. “You need to get out of here.”

“Out of where?” Evie turned, opening her eyes wider than was comfortable.

“This house.”

“Right now? I don’t really feel like going anywhere.…”

“No, I mean, in general. You need a new place.”

“You want me to move?”

“No, I don’t
want
you to move, but maybe that’s the best thing. A change of scenery always helps put things into perspective.”

Who the hell needs perspective? I see everything clearly.
“This is my home. This is what I need.”

“A smaller place would be easier to manage,” Beth said.

“I’ve been managing this house on my own for over three years, in case you’ve forgotten. It’s not like Richard moved out yesterday.” Evie cringed at Beth’s and Laney’s suggestion that this house wasn’t her forever home. She held her hair off her face with one hand and fanned herself with the other. Her eyes shifted left as she counted. “I’ve lived here for more than a dozen years. I’m not moving. Ever.”

“Take a deep breath,” Laney said. Evie did. “Are you finished? It was just a suggestion,” Laney said in a timid, un-Laney-like voice. “Your parents just thought—”

“You’re in cahoots with my parents?”

“And your sister,” Beth confessed without making eye contact.

“This is where I want to be,” Evie said.
This is where I need to be.

“Of course we don’t want you to move. But can you afford to stay?”

“How can I afford not to stay?” Evie threw her arms up into the air. Her friends were being ridiculous. She and the kids needed stability. Even moving across town would be disruptive. And they’d had enough disruptions.

“We mean
afford,
” Beth said.

Evie froze. She’d been so busy experiencing the emotional reverie of Richard’s death that she hadn’t considered the financial consequences. Without his support check adding to her commissions from her part-time job at Third Coast Gifts, how the hell
was
she going to pay all the bills this month? Or next month? Or ever? The mortgage was due in two weeks. No, sixteen days. Considering Richard was alive one minute and dead the next, and that in the past week they’d had a funeral, shiva, visitors, and a cookout in the living room—sixteen days seemed like a long time. But it wasn’t. Maybe she
had
to move.

“We should go,” Laney said. “But just think about calling your parents and sister to talk about it. There are nice, new town houses on the other side of Lakeview.”

“Don’t go,” Evie said. “I can’t move.
That
is one thing I’m sure of.” Evie didn’t know how she was sure of anything without a real meal or a normal night’s sleep since when? And it was what day? It was Wednesday. Maybe. “The kids would have to change schools. They’d have to make all new friends, they’d have new teachers. I can’t ask them to do that. I won’t.”

“Kids are resilient,” Laney said, picking at the pilling on the front of her sweatpants.

“When it comes to the twins, I think I’ve cashed in my resilient chips.”

Evie had heard it a million times since the divorce—kids
are
resilient. Hers were proof. But you could stretch a rubber band only so many times before it snapped. Plus,
she
didn’t want to move. This was the home where she’d recalibrated her definition of
family
, accepting that she and Sam and Sophie were complete—not a unit with missing parts.

“Your parents told us they’d consider moving here,” Beth said.

The words tumbled in Evie’s heart. Her parents couldn’t live in Lakewood; they’d waited their whole lives to leave Wilmington and become full-time Floridians. But Evie wasn’t really thinking about them. She was thinking about herself and Sophie and Sam. What she wanted. What she wanted for her kids. Which was for things to remain as normal as possible. Maybe it was selfish to stay, rely on friends, grasping at ways to make the newest new life make sense. Maybe the best way for a new life was to leave the old one. Maybe she should move to Palm Aire so the kids could be near their grandparents. It might be nice with its sunshine and pools and shuffleboard tournaments. And of course there were those early-bird dinners. Yes, it would be nice—when she was eighty. Until then Evie would revel in deep snow and winters that lasted until June, a center-hall colonial with a red door and black shutters that needed a coat or six of paint. She wanted the backyard with the swing set no one used and the kitchen door that squeaked a familiar tune even with squirts of WD-40 that would make the Tin Man sing. She wanted the house where she’d memorized the cracks and crevices, where the twins had learned to walk, where
she’d
learned to stand on her own.

The house where she’d learn that all over again.

This old house in Lakewood, with its mud patches in the backyard, with its drafty, double-hung windows and dated pink-and-black-tiled bathrooms was hers, quitclaim deed included. She’d gotten it in the divorce, knowing the planned renovations would never happen. She didn’t care. It suited her in its simple, dated grandeur. It was best for her and the kids a few years ago, and it was better than best for them now.

Unless she couldn’t pay the mortgage.

Chapter 3

F
OR THE THIRD NIGHT IN
a row, Sam and Sophie fell asleep watching a movie in the living room. The thought of rallying them into bed via a normal routine did not appeal to Evie. It was winter break in Lakewood. She knew their routines would be redesigned, but not just yet. Right now she existed just a little bit in denial. It was a safe and comfortable place.

The phone rang. The kids didn’t budge—the blessing of exhaustion. Evie reached to answer without looking. It had to be Scott. She’d left messages for two days. He’d have some explaining to do. Who was she kidding? She’d just be glad to hear his voice.

“Hey, handsome,” Evie whispered, cupping her hand around her mouth.

“Evie, it’s Nicole.”

Evie straightened and her cheeks grew hot.

“I’m in your driveway.”

“You’re where?”

“I’m in your driveway.” Evie wasn’t deaf, just dumbfounded. “Can I come in? I was driving around and noticed the glow from your TV.”

What were they? Sorority sisters?
What made Nicole think a late-night chat—at Evie’s house—was good or even acceptable? What happened to old-fashioned, ill-timed, hastily composed e-mails strewn with typos? Was nothing sacred?

Evie clicked the phone off. Mouth agape, she walked to the front door.

There was Nicole, in all her inappropriate splendor—a pink, fuzzy robe that looked three sizes too big wrapped all the way under her arm. Her hands were tucked up into her sleeves and she hugged herself. Nicole looked like a swaddled newborn, secure with the wrapping, unsure what to do with arms, limbs, and emotions.