The Trouble with Lexie (20 page)

“Exactly,” Lexie said, and she breathed out as if she were blowing a gnat out of her lungs.

“You okay, Miss James?” Ethan jerked his head toward Lexie.

“I might be a little fluey.” Lexie couldn't lift her head. She
was unable to fend off the grief and humiliation that was roaring through her.

“I was about to take her temperature when you showed up.” Amy clapped her hands. Lexie wondered if she wanted to distract Ethan with the clap the way you might distract a dog lunging at a piece of cheese on a platter.

“I thought you two were going out to get a drink?”

“We were, but I was insisting on taking her temperature before she walked out this door!” Amy looked at Lexie. Lexie, dumbly, remained mute.

“Okay, well, I'm sorry I'm such a dumb-ass.” Ethan stood and stretched; his body towered over Lexie and Amy like he was a full-grown man.

“Oh honey, you have nothing to apologize for.” Amy stood, too. Lexie stayed seated. She wished she could anesthetize herself into oblivion, darkness, silence. A Michael Jackson sleep.

“I hope you feel better, Miss James.” Ethan stared at Lexie. Tiny lines of worry radiated above each of his eyebrows.

“Thanks, Ethan.” Lexie pushed her mouth into a smile and lifted her right hand. A flap instead of a wave.

Amy stood at the door and had a few final words with Ethan while Lexie pushed herself out of the chair and wobbled into the bedroom. She popped a Klonopin and then hid the pill bottle under her pillow. She wanted to hit that townie bar and hit it hard. And there was no way Amy would let Lexie drink if she knew she'd taken the Klonopin.

Amy returned to the bedroom. She sat beside Lexie on the bed. “You okay?”

“I feel sick.”

“Do you want to cry?”

“I want to get drunk.”

“Don't get drunk. We each need to take our own car tonight.” Cal's house was in the opposite direction from Ruxton and the bar. It would add forty minutes of driving if Amy had to take Lexie home before meeting Cal.

“Fine, no big deal.”

“Are we going to talk about this?”

“I can't talk about it. It's sitting in my stomach like a giant lump of clay and I . . . I can't talk.” Lexie fell back onto the bed. She stared at the spiderweb-cracked ceiling.

“Are you sure?”

“Were they actually kissing in that picture?” Lexie hoped there was something she didn't understand. Maybe it was an old picture. Maybe they were cheek-to-cheek and this was the send-off holiday before the divorce. The last hurrah.

“Yes. They were kissing.” Amy said it firmly, as if she knew Lexie was searching for an alternate reality.

“Let's talk about this tomorrow.” Lexie rolled over, stuck her face into her pillow and started sobbing. She pushed her head in deeper, muffled her mouth and screamed.

“I think we better talk.” Amy rubbed Lexie's shoulder.

Lexie came up for air, sniffed and gulped. “I don't want to sit around and analyze anything. I want to not feel it.”

“Well, you gotta feel it at some point.”

“I'll feel it tomorrow.” The truth was, Lexie felt the pain so intensely she could almost see it as a physical thing: a vibrating sheet of silvery magenta that clanged against her like cold aluminum. “Let's get a drink.”

“YOU'RE DRUNK AS COOTER BROWN,” AMY SAID. THEY WERE SITTING
on greasy wooden stools. Lexie's cheek was on the bar, her face turned toward Amy. Five empty shot glasses encircled Lexie's head. Amy held on to the neck of a light beer.

The place was as dark as a closet and smelled like a hamster cage into which beer had been spilled. There were three TVs on, a pool table with a crowd around it, and a vintage Donkey Kong game in the corner. Lexie and Amy were the only women in dresses.

“I can't believe I did that to Peter.” The aluminum sheet of pain had been rattling forth a ruckus of emotions. Mostly shame, guilt, regret, and humiliation.

“You didn't know.”

“You knew.” It was hard to enunciate with half her mouth smashed into the bar.

“No I didn't.”

“You warmed me.”

“I warmed you?”

“WARMed me.”

“Warmed you?!”

“WORN.”

“Warn?”

“Shit, I'm drunk. I need another shot.” Lexie sat up.

“I'm puttin' you in a cab.” Amy pulled out her phone.

“What time is it?”

“Nine. Cal texted, no one's there so he's closing shop.”

“Go meet him. He loves you. I'm a fuckup. I fucked a fucker and I fucked off a guy who wasn't a fucker because I'm a fucker like my dad.”

“You're nothing like your daddy.” Amy cupped her hand over the mouthpiece and turned her back to Lexie so she could hear the phone.

“I have better legs than my dad.” Lexie turned so her legs weren't under the bar. “He was all bloated in the belly and he had these chicken legs sticking out.” She kicked up her right foot and her silver sandal flew across the room. It skimmed a guy's shoulder before landing on the ground. The guy picked up the shoe. He turned around, trying to see where it had come from. Lexie attempted invisibility by blowing on her nails as if she'd just had a manicure. When she looked up, the guy was engaged in conversation, her shoe sitting casually on the bar next to his beer.

“Cab will be here in five minutes.” Amy consulted her phone again. “Shit.”

“What?”

“Cal wants to make a nine thirty movie.”

“Go!”

“I'm not gonna leave you like this.” Amy pointed at Lexie's bare foot. “Where's your shoe?”

“O'er there with that beer.” Lexie waved toward the guy. She started laughing.

“How did it get over there?”

“Hell if I know.”

“Honey, you're so drunk, you ain't got the good sense God gave a goose.”

“Thought I was as drunk as Hooter Brown.”

“Cooter Brown. And drunk as a goose.”

“I am a goose. A stupidy dumb-dumb goose. I deserved this.”

“You do not deserve this.”

Lexie held her wobbling pointer finger up toward Amy's mouth. “Yes, I do. I broke Peter's heart. I chose to be with the motherfucker. His wife! His wife, Amy! There's a wife! I fucked someone with a wife! Not at the same time, like, that's gross, she's fifty—”

“Stop right there.” Amy held her palm up. “First of all, we're both gonna be fifty one day if we're lucky, so don't start bitchin' on older women. Secondly, you're in no frame of mind to look at any of this clearly. So let it go for now and we'll pick through it all over breakfast tomorrow.” Amy checked her phone. Lexie knew she'd rather be with Cal than babysitting drunk Lexie. Who could blame her?

“No breakfast. I've caught a bout of anorexia.”

“Oh, don't kid about that. Let's get your shoe; we gotta get you to the cab.” Amy tried to help Lexie off the bar stool.

“I don't want my shoe.”

“You don't want your shoe?” Amy gave a little tug and pulled Lexie off the stool. She steadied her on her rubbery legs.

“It's one of my wedding shoes. They both shoulda stayed with the dress.”

“Fine, leave the shoe.” Amy put a few bills on the bar while holding Lexie with one hand. She hoisted Lexie's purse onto her own shoulder, and helped her walk, limping, outside.

“Go to the mooovies,” Lexie slurred.

“I'll leave when your cab shows.” Right then, the only cab in town pulled in. Amy opened the back door and almost fell in her
self as she tried to keep Lexie from face-planting on the seat. She sat Lexie up and put her purse on her lap.

“Can you take her to Ruxton?” she asked the cabbie.

“Sure thing.” The cabbie tilted the rearview mirror and watched as Lexie slumped toward the door.

“I'll wake you up with croissants and coffee tomorrow.” Amy molded Lexie into a straighter sitting position.

“No, I have anorexia now. Remember?”

“Hush! I'll see you tomorrow.” Amy shut the door and rushed off.

Lexie looked at the cabbie who was now turned in his seat looking at her. There was no bulletproof glass partition, no credit card slot, nothing that made the cab feel like a cab from the inside. Out the front window she saw Peter and his girlfriend, Celeste, walking toward the bar.

“Oh, lookee lookee.” Lexie groaned as she watched them. Celeste was wearing a denim jacket, a white satin skirt, and cowboy boots. Lexie wished she were wearing that outfit. There was far more confidence in cowboy boots than a pair—or a single, right now—of strappy sandals.

“You going to the town or the school?” the cabbie asked.

“I'm stayin' here.” Lexie slid across the seat and opened the door.

“You sure?” The cabbie looked like Bert, Lexie thought. Or maybe it actually was Bert. Was he driving cabs in Western Massachusetts? But wait. Bert was dead. Right?

“You're the same age as Daniel,” Lexie said, to imaginary Bert. “Tha's kinda gross, huh?”

“You okay?” The cabbie asked.

“Yup.” Lexie put her shod foot on the gravel and half hopped and half limped back to the bar. She opened the door and peered in. Celeste and Peter were sitting where Lexie and Amy had sat. She was holding a martini glass to his mouth and he was taking a sip.

Celeste lowered the glass and wiped Peter's lips with her fingertips. The gesture was intimate, tender. Peter leaned in and kissed Celeste. Lexie gasped.

The door opened behind Lexie and a large man with a large head and a beard that grew out into a trapezoid appeared at her back. “In or out?”

“Huh?” Lexie's couldn't stop watching Peter and Celeste.

“You coming or going?” The man's head nodded up and down as he examined Lexie from stem to stern.

“Goin' where?”

“Are you leaving the bar or entering it?” He unabashedly stared at Lexie's breasts. As if he were about to bite her there.

“I hafta watch my ex-fiancé with the very beautiful, beautiful, beautiful Celeste.”

“Why?”

“To see how I blew it.”

“You didn't blow it with him. I'll fucking marry you.” Again the man's eyes roved Lexie's body, as if assessing a purchase.

“ZZ Top,” Lexie mumbled. The mind/mouth passageway was too drenched to create sentences for what she was thinking. If she had been better able to speak, Lexie would have said she was worried that guys like the one speaking to her now, whom she thought resembled someone in the band ZZ Top, would be all she'd have to choose from in the future. Compounding this fear was a belief that
her social life, henceforth, would be spent in sweaty bars playing Donkey Kong.

“Yeah, I like ZZ Top, too, so let's fucking get married.”

“I cheat.” She looked back at Peter and saw that he was staring at her, a pained look on his face. Celeste pivoted to see what he was looking at and her jacket swung open. She wasn't wearing a satin skirt; she was in Lexie's wedding dress.

Lexie turned and rushed out the door. “I don't care if you cheat as long as I get you in the sack every day!” the guy shouted after her.

Lexie stagger-hopped around the parking lot, looking for her car. She talked to Peter, though she knew he couldn't hear. “Didn't leave you for ZZ Top . . . that dress looks cute with boots . . .” The gravel hurt her bare foot more than when she'd left the bar the first time. She needed a shoulder to hold her up; she needed a human crutch.

The Jetta was hidden between two giant SUVs and so it took Lexie much longer to find it than it should have in a parking lot of only fifteen cars. Upon discovering it, Lexie clicked the lock, got in, and started the engine.

L
EXIE LIFTED THE FAKE ROCK IN THE FRONT GARDEN AND TOOK
out the key to the Waites' lake house. She let herself in the front door, dropped the key into her purse, and started wandering, flicking on lights as she went. First stop: living room. There had been a few framed pictures on the grand piano when she and Daniel had spent the week there. Tonight there were three or four times as many. Half of them were pictures of Daniel and Jen.

Lexie slipped her purse off her shoulder and swept her arm across the piano top, sending the pictures to the ground. She pushed the heel of her single sandal into one of the frames. The glass refused to crack. She pushed harder and toppled to the ground. Lexie lay still and looked up at the ceiling. It was coffered, pristine white, with not a single visible crack. In all her life, Lexie had never lived in a room that didn't have at least one crack in the ceiling.

She rolled up to sitting, picked up the picture closest to her and stared at it. Jen and Daniel on the boat, the wind blowing Jen's hair into a long blond mustache across Daniel's face. Both of them
laughing. Lexie threw the picture across the room. It landed on the carpet, intact.

Lexie crawled across the floor and gathered the photos into one pile. Then she held on to the leg of the piano and pulled herself up to standing. One by one, Lexie lifted the photos off the carpet and tried to arrange them the way they had been.

Once that was done, Lexie picked up her purse and hobbled toward Jen's bedroom. Or, she amended in her head, the bedroom she had been told where Jen slept alone. She pushed open the door and turned on the light. The bed was perfectly made. It looked like a showroom bed—everything white and pale blue, pillows just so. Lexie imagined it smelled like lavender, or lilacs, or something else pure and fresh.

“I hate you, Daniel Waite.” Lexie wobbled to the bed, dropped her purse onto the floor and stared at the pillows. “Fuck you!” She threw the pillows, one by one, onto the floor. Then she fell to her knees, crawled across the floor, and tossed each pillow back to the bed. Most of them made the target. When they didn't, she kept trying until they did.

Lexie stood and surveyed her work. It was difficult to remember how the pillows had been arranged when she had walked in. For a good five minutes Lexie adjusted and readjusted the pillows. How did people know how to do bed pillows? When did you get that lesson?

The master bathroom felt overly opulent and impossibly clean. There were two separate toilet rooms off the white marble room. It was like a mausoleum. Lexie pulled out her phone and took a picture. Without thinking, she texted the picture to Betsy Simms and wrote,
like a mooosalini.

Lexie walked into the closest toilet room. It contained a toilet and a shiny silver toilet paper roll. She walked into the second one. That one contained a toilet, a shiny silver toilet paper roll, and a silver magazine rack that had
Forbes,
the
Wall Street Journal, Harvard Law Review,
and several copies of a slim little magazine called
Bottom Line.

“LIAR!” Lexie kicked the magazine rack with her bare foot. It felt like a hammer had been swung into her toe. Lexie screamed and held the throbbing toe. “I hate you!”

Lexie returned to the first toilet room where she sat and peed. She may have fallen asleep because suddenly she had the sensation of waking up. She grabbed a wad of toilet paper to wipe and realized she'd failed to pull down her underwear. Lifting her hips, she awkwardly worked off the wet panties, then wiped, flushed, and left the panties like a washed-up red rodent at the base of the toilet.

There were two sinks and seven mirrored doors across the vanity in the main part of the bathroom. Lexie washed her hands, then opened each door in order. In the first cabinet was Daniel's stuff: deodorant, saline nasal spray, L'Occitane aftershave, Prada cologne. She picked up the bottle of cologne and tossed it onto the marble floor. It made a chinking sound but miraculously didn't break.

Lexie went to the cabinet that held Jen's makeup. She considered putting it on, and then thought better of it. She'd already applied makeup before leaving Rilke. She didn't need more.

The last medicine cabinet held prescription pill bottles, cortisone creams, eyedrops. Lexie rotated each bottle until she could read the label. There was nothing familiar or interesting. Until she found the Klonopin. The dosage was the same as Lexie's pre
scription, .05. She opened the bottle and dry-swallowed a pill. She poured the rest into her hand, looked around the bathroom for her purse, and then stuffed them down her bra. The pills tickled her skin. She put the lid back on. Inexplicably, she licked the outside of the bottle before returning it to the medicine cabinet, exactly where she'd found it.

Lexie left the bathroom and surveyed the bedroom. She was looking for something, but she couldn't remember what. Her purse! It was on the floor by the side of the bed. She had every intention of removing the Klonopin from her bra and sticking them in the internal pocket of her purse, but instead she dove onto the bed face-first.

With her head resting on one cheek, Lexie stared at the bedside table. The wood was so shiny she could almost see her reflection. Who polished it? The gay housekeepers? Were there really gay housekeepers or had that been a lie, too?

Lexie reached out and opened the drawer in the bedside table. She leaned over and peered inside. A large rubber vibrator shaped like an exclamation point rested beside a glass jar of earplugs.

“But why?” Daniel had told Lexie that when Jen went through menopause two years ago, she'd lost interest in sex. That was one of the reasons, he claimed, their marriage fell apart. Lexie picked up the vibrator, rolled onto her back, lifted her dress, pushed the on button, and pressed the rubbery wand against herself. She could barely feel it. She imagined her body as a lump of molded lard.

Lexie gave up, lifted the vibrator to her face and sniffed at it. She rolled to her stomach and rubbed her nose back and forth into the pillow, as if to rub off whatever bodily juices may have infected her. The vibrator felt like a small hand weight as she dropped it
toward the gaping bedside drawer. It missed and landed in her sack purse instead.

Lexie rolled to her back and kicked her arms and legs out in a letter
X
. “I'm
cavorting
on your bed.” She looked to the side of the bed that belonged to Daniel and started crying. The sadness inside Lexie ran like a wash cycle: circling, swirling, rotating, swishing. It came straight out of her mouth, eyes, and nose, everything wet and running. Lexie wanted to flip a switch and shut it all down.

And somehow she did. Lexie flipped the switch. And the light in her head didn't turn on again until the moment she was awakened by Jen Waite.