The Scarlet Letter Scandal (5 page)

B
ack in Keytown, Rachel pulled into the driveway of her house on Maple Lane. Before she headed into work, she needed to take her son, Jacob, to the YMCA summer day camp. She looked up at her house, willing herself to hate it less than she did. It was the so-and-so model (the Avalon? the Windsor? She couldn’t even remember; it had been five years since they’d had it built) and it was a piece of crap. The vinyl siding, as with many other houses in the neighborhood, needed power washing. The neighborhood’s rampant green algae mildew was much more noticeable on houses that were lighter—if the homeowners had known about it when they chose siding colors, they all would’ve chosen algae green, which they would’ve called “Moss Green” because it sounded nicer.

She looked at the wood trim around her windows, which all needed paint. People with old Victorian houses were constantly bitching about upkeep, but Rachel didn’t think those houses needed any more upkeep than a modern cookie-cutter McMansion in a subdivision. The houses were slapped together and only five years after their construction they faced numerous problems homeowners couldn’t afford. Roof leaks, drywall cracks, and drafts were only a few of the issues with houses they’d been told in the brochures would be “maintenance free.”

She texted Jacob (“In the car! Time to go!”), too lazy to get him. Her husband, Martin, was in the house, working from home today. He was an executive director for a non-profit environmental organization nearby and every so often worked from his home office. If she went into the house, he’d ask her about the breakfast and she didn’t have time to fill him in.

Her phone lit up with a new text message. She opened it, expecting it to be Jacob telling her he was on the way. It wasn’t.

Kate: How’s my favorite ginger?

Rachel brightened. Her entire body perked up just seeing the message.

Rachel: Much better now that she’s hearing from her favorite blond.

Kate: You in town today?

Rachel: Yeah, eff tax extensions. You?

Kate: Cleaning office to get ready for back-to-school. Stop by? Bring lunch?

Rachel: Can do. Name a time.

Kate: One pm. No onions on my sub.

Rachel: Yes, ma’am.

Rachel felt chills down the center of her, and turned down the car’s air conditioning. Goose bumps rose on her arms and legs. Her day had just been made.

The car door slammed. Rachel turned some internal, automatic switch, and was transformed back into her motherhood reality. Jacob sat in the passenger seat, saying nothing.

“Hey, sweetie,” said Rachel. “Are you ready for camp? Sunscreen, bug spray, bottle of water, and lunch?”

“Yes, Mom,” said her son, who would enter middle school in a few weeks. His brown, shaggy hair hid his eyes despite his mother’s many pleas he get it cut. She sighed, missing her little boy and wondering how she’d handle the uncertain hormonal years ahead. His earbuds perpetually stuck to the sides of his head, he barely seemed to want to speak to her anymore. “You already packed that all this morning, remember?”

“I do,” said Rachel. “But I wanted to make sure you packed the lunch into the backpack. Are you bummed about something?”

“You know I hate this dumb nature camp,” said Jacob. “I’m too old for it. I don’t know why you’re making me go to it.”

“You can’t sit around all summer playing on your iPad,” said Rachel. “Dad thought this one would be fun for you.”

“Yeah, well it’s not,” Jacob responded.

Rachel quietly sighed. Why did it seem like kids were never happy no matter how much you did for them?

“It’s only a few more days,” she said, “then we can go to Ocean City and you’ll be able to go boogie boarding and go to the waterpark and stuff.”

“Finally,” said Jacob.

And Rachel wondered what happened to her sweet, bubbly little boy. It seemed like he had been abducted by aliens and replaced with this moody, disinterested preteen who currently had his head buried in a game on his phone. She knew childhood would disappear one day, but it didn’t make it any less sad when it had happened with her only son.

She drove on in silence, letting her thoughts wander back to Kate. The last two months had gone by in an instant. Their affair was as scorching as a Maryland summer. Rachel had partaken in, with the full knowledge and enthusiastic support of her husband, a number of affairs with women over the years. But there was something about this relationship that was different. Their connection was so strong, their time together much anticipated and so appreciated. They communicated all day—Snapchats, Facebook messages, texts—they didn’t even mean to do it, it was just a natural friendship that had become far more. Their weekly lunch dates were much anticipated.

Rachel walked around to the other side of the car door to open it for Jacob, who still tapped away at his text message.

“C’mon, buddy,” she said. “I need to get to work. I’m already late and my jerk boss is going to give me crap.”

“I thought I wasn’t allowed to say
crap
, Mommm,” whined Jacob.

“You’re not,” she responded. “But I can say whatever I want, because I’m an adult. Have fun at camp!”

She handed him his backpack and he skulked off.

Rachel spent a quick moment in the parking lot checking for messages before driving into town. There were three:

EFFINGBOSS: on way in?

Kellie: What the fuck just even happened at The Princess’ house this morning?

Kate: See you at one, ginger.

She smiled at Kate’s nickname for her, decided to answer Kellie when she had more time, then grimaced at her boss’s message.
Damn
, she thought. Aileen, the principal accountant at her firm, was the worst bitch of a boss ever. Everything about her, from her outdated ’90s shoulder-padded suits and ’80s feathered fake-blond haircut to her condescending attitude and passive-aggressiveness, drove Rachel insane.

She wondered how she was going to cruise into work past 10 a.m. after the little gossipfest at Princess Jeannie’s house and the camp drop-off and still manage to deliver sandwiches to her girl crush at the college by 1 p.m., but she’d make it work somehow.

As she put her phone back in her purse, Rachel saw the clear amber plastic of the prescription bottle tucked inside. Her son’s Adderall prescription, picked up at the pharmacy yesterday, called to her. She’d often heard of other moms using the drug as a pick-me-up and for weight loss. She had wondered if it would give her an extra burst of energy to get through her days, which were constantly filled with stress and running around.
Well, one won’t kill me
, she thought, grabbing the bottle of water from the SUV cup holder. She tossed back a pill.

Rachel arrived at the downtown accounting office a few buildings away from Lisa’s bakery. Finding nowhere to park on the street, she navigated the narrow alley between the brick buildings, cursing Keytown’s lack of parking. She wasn’t supposed to park in the small lot for customers behind the office building, but she figured she could move the car at lunch.
If that bitch goes out to lunch today and sees my car out here, she will lose her mind
, she thought, squeezing her SUV into a narrow spot; branches spilling over one side of the brick wall scraped her passenger’s side door and she cursed under her breath again.

She rushed into the office and practically ran directly into Aileen, who stood there, hand on hip, wearing her typical outdated suit (this one an ’80s aerobic class shade of teal) and standard-issue ugly-but-comfortable old-lady sandals, never failing to reveal her ugly talon-like toenails, painted pale pink.

“Well, I’m so glad you could join us,” Aileen sneered in her fake sing-songy voice with matching fake smile that never reached her narrow lizard-like eyes, surrounded as they were by poorly applied blue eye shadow and a pair of overly large glasses. Though she was only a few years older than Rachel’s forty-two, she looked at least a decade her senior. Her pale pink manicure and wrinkled hands clutched a large pile of mail. She issued a casual up-down visual review of Rachel’s lower-cut cotton dress.

I honestly do not know how this woman continues to exist as though she was dropped here in a time machine
, thought Rachel for the hundredth time.
And damn the mail for coming right at the moment I was walking in. Also fuck you for staring at my tits, ya weirdo.

“I’m so sorry,” said Rachel. “Jacob woke up and said he wasn’t feeling well and I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to get him off to camp.”

Aileen pursed her lips. “Well, that’s great you were able to work out your child care issues today.”

Rachel didn’t respond. She had learned from many failed communications with her boss that digging a conversational hole was unwise: Aileen would always have the last word so the sooner you gave it to her, the better.
Show her the belly.
Aileen clickety-clacked across the worn hardwood floor back to her large corner office facing the perfectly manicured courtyard and, fortunately for Rachel, not facing the parking lot.

Rachel hurried to her office after picking up a stack of her mail from the receptionist. She plopped into her chair and it rolled slightly on its protective floor mat. She turned on her desktop computer and unpacked her laptop from its plain black bag, setting it up on the desk next to her computer. Rachel preferred to work on two machines simultaneously. Everything business- and accounting-related remained on the desktop that looked about as outdated as her boss; personal communications and Internet use were reserved for the laptop. She explained the duality of devices on her desk to her boss as needing the laptop for looking up tax code regulations and checking company email while she was in the middle of the accounting software. Aileen was too cheap to buy desktops that would’ve been easier and quicker to use with the Internet, so she allowed it.

Rachel opened her MacBook Air, the splurge a result of her own tax refund. Her husband, Martin, would never have even noticed since of course she did their taxes. Her fifty-five-year-old white-haired husband was now semi-retired from the environmental non-profit, working part time from home so he could pursue his “dream” of writing screenplays. He was probably out on his canoe on the lake by now, working on “character development.” Though she’d loved his poetic nature at first, the bottom line was that she had married him for the money she thought he’d had but that he had eventually frittered away on his “dreams.” Rachel wasn’t crazy about concepts like
semi-retirement
and
dreams
and
character development
because she was still the one with the nine-to-five job. She sighed, sitting back, and noticed the most delicious buzzing sensation moving through her veins.
Oh, that pill
. Maybe it was just what the doctor ordered (or didn’t) to get her through the day.

She turned on Spotify on the laptop for ambient music to block out the echoing voices from the ancient building’s hallways, and perused her work computer for emails needing immediate attention from her boss. She quickly tapped out response emails to clients, and one to Aileen, in an effort to get the earliest time-stamp possible on the communications. Having bought herself a little time via the responses, she turned to the Apple laptop she much preferred using. She had positioned her desk so that if her boss came to the door, there wouldn’t be a clear view of her screens.

The iMessage screen popped up with a new message from Kellie.

Kellie: Get my text about Jeannie’s? Ugh seeing her really didn’t set a good tone for my day facing Nooner’s Club.

Rachel responded.

Rachel: Wish I was there instead of here in tax hell. Jeannie’s was a freaking nightmare. Who the hell does she think she is?

Kellie: Wife of Jesus? Who knows. Can you imagine if she knew we were in the sex ring or whatever she called it? She’d burn us at the stake in the community playground.

Rachel: She’s too worried about some “promiscuous town harlot” stealing her husband. Like anyone wants her husband.

Kellie: u r a mean girl. ;)

Rachel: I’m too old to be a girl -- what’re you 22?

Kellie: you know I’m 32 dummy. If I had a nickel for every time you say “what’re you 22” I’d be rich.

Rachel: You make more money from the Rocks tip jar on the bar than I do here at my lame full time job where I have to wear clothes and leave the house.

Kellie: bwahaha it is nice working from home. Ok back to the party. See ya l8r xo

Rachel: You mean working it from home. ;)

Rachel leaned back in her chair, smiling to herself at the fact that she did more actual tax work at home than she did in her office. At home after Jacob went to bed she’d do a few tax forms in preparation for the next day, so she’d have them done and could enjoy the relative peacefulness of her office, where at least there wasn’t a needy tween and husband. That Adderall had worked like a charm.

Turning to her laptop, she leaned her chair back toward the large floor-to-ceiling wooden window frame. She put her feet on the desk and opened WordPress. Before she snuck out to bring sandwiches to her lover’s office, she needed to write an update post to the Keytown Mouse blog, where she now signed in as the administrator and sole author.