When She Was Gone (20 page)

“But I think I'll go for a run,” he said.

“You've been running a lot,” she said, just noticing now. When had it changed from once or twice a month on the weekend? This summer? Charlie hadn't exercised at home in years, preferring the gym at work, where she imagined him tugging away at the pulleys and levers of ancient exercise equipment, a towel around his neck, the clock on the wall erasing the potential of that singular billable hour. He brought home his gym bag once a month, and the sweatshirt and sweatpants hardly bore evidence of great effort. But still, he was in decent shape, for his age. He ran once a month or so, weekend warrior, and she always thought of it as an excuse to not ferry the kids to their practices and games; to not accompany her to Stop & Shop, which he did sometimes, lagging behind her cart like an eight-year-old, tossing fried onion rings into the basket to piss her off. Maybe to tease her.

Then he was standing, stretching his sinewy legs, bending with the stiff effort of a man who had just been sleeping. He was wearing only boxer shorts, and she was watching him, the extra fat that had settled around his belly, the hairy mole on his back where it bent. He was bouncing, making curt, old movements. His eyes were slightly crusty and the hairs on his thighs were at least half gray. He was bouncing, and she imagined his muscles tearing a little with each brittle tug. His shorts were red tartan and worn, and the fly gapped open as he put his hands on his hips, tugged his waist forward and back, a stiff old gym teacher. She could see his
penis moving against the fabric, the remnants of a morning erection making the little mouth of the opening talk to her.

Finally, he was gone. She wasn't horny anymore. Or if she was, she didn't deserve to be. She was out of bed and seeing the kids off to their pursuits. She was drinking coffee and sorting out the fridge, almost as though her husband had gone off for an honest day.

And there she was in the kitchen when Charlie came home with his shirt damp, his legs looking younger for their work. He leaned on the counter and looked at her; she could feel herself blush under the scrutiny.

“Would you like coffee?” she asked. She wasn't sure how she would make it through this day with him, what they would have to say to each other. She'd had plans. Ordinary plans, perhaps, but plans nonetheless. She'd planned to go to the bank, to stop by Lord & Taylor for bonus days on her favorite cosmetics. She'd planned to walk down Sycamore, almost past 6
¹
/
₂
, but not quite that far, because although she hoped Jordan might see her, she didn't want to see him—this same theory held for parking at the bottom of town and walking up to the bank, past Starbucks; she wanted to be seen through the tinted glass, but not to engage—and besides, she was going to stop by the Steins' house. She wanted to see how Abigail was holding up. She had dressed in her pink and green dress from the Lilly Pulitzer store she'd bought with a gift certificate Charlie gave her—a Chamber of Commerce certificate, so unspecific he hadn't even chosen a store, for god's sake. Still, the dress looked good on her, in a WASPy,
I've got something you want but I probably won't give it up willingly sort of way. She liked that, with lipstick ordinarily too dark for the end of August. And while it was sexy in a way only certain men understood, it wasn't inappropriate to wear to call on a neighbor in crisis. Which Abigail was. There was something about the way she'd leaned against Reeva's door frame, when Reeva had told her about Mr. Leonard, that made her want to talk more, to unravel, to be someone to lean on. She didn't care about the gossip or the details in particular; she honestly wanted to help someone. It might make her a better person.

She sighed as she stuffed old spaghetti into the disposal. Charlie flipped through the newspaper, but she could tell he wasn't reading.

“Want to go out?” he asked. Reeva felt a prickle at the backs of her knees and reached down to scratch. But it wasn't an itch, it was something familiar, a specific sort of surprise, almost arousal, she used to feel around Charlie. Her skin tense with the possibility of touch.

“Out? Oh, I had somewhere to go—” She left him at the counter, bending his knees back, stork.

“I thought we could go to Starbucks,” her husband said. “We could sit and drink coffee and talk, like grown-ups sometimes do—” He was watching her, but she couldn't turn to meet his eyes.

“Hmm,” she said, striding up the stairs. She should say yes, she should. Small concessions. She stopped at the landing, turned. Charlie was in the living room now, doing backovers,
pressing his yellowish toenails into her carpet. There was something about all that exertion that made her proud of him, and she reached, trying to remember what it was like to feel proud of him as a man, not a partner, not a father, not just the moneymaking part of the team. His back was long and powerful; he didn't really look old. He wasn't old. She wondered how other women saw him.

Then she went into the bathroom, to check her makeup, to reach back and unbuckle her bra. She didn't need a bra in this dress, and suddenly she felt restricted. She pulled it out through the armholes by the strap and went to the bedroom, noticing a smudge on the window. She wiped at it with a tissue. Maybe he'd just go off for coffee by himself. Let him go to Starbucks and see their daughter there, nursing a crush on the man his wife had been sleeping with. Her stomach was tight. She was so foolish. It wasn't guilt she was feeling, though she should have felt guilt, it was heat. The limbic system, she remembered, sex, food, fight. Hers was overactive, she was sure. She rubbed at the smudge on the window, but it wouldn't come off.

“Hey,” said Charlie. She hadn't noticed he'd followed her into the bedroom. “I like that dress.”

His erection was obscene through the jogging shorts, smooth yellow nylon from 1980-something when he'd last been a regular jogger. It was admirable, actually, he was admirable. She wanted to know what he saw in her, whether he could sense the lines of the dark red
A
under her skin. And she did love him, though she didn't understand why he
was home, for the first time without making some elaborate vacation plan, or some golf outing, in at least ten years.

“Hey,” he said again. Now he was pressing against her, feeling her breasts. She wanted to stop him; she wanted to tell him she'd cheated on him, but it was over. Her body, however, didn't want anything of the kind. She had never lost her morning arousal, and as he reached around to rub her, she cried out, coming almost before his fingers started to work. The window wasn't covered. She looked out at the street, at a bag of grass clippings from the Hopsmiths' yard spilling out onto the sidewalk, at a fat robin hopping on one leg as if injured. She came again as he touched her and she wasn't able to be quiet, she was yelling, but it felt as though someone else was making the noise, someone else was enjoying this. Charlie was, at least, he had pulled her dress up from behind, had entered her, was groping her with intensified intention.

“You like that?” he said. “You're a little wild today.”

She couldn't say anything, she might give something away. Could he tell her body was different? She thought she could smell Jordan, only it was her husband's fingers in her mouth. And now he was pulling her hair, working against her and into her, and telling her she was bad, a bad girl, the way he often did, because he thought she liked it, only this time he was telling the truth.

They lay down on his favorite striped sheets. She was still dressed. She tugged her underpants back on and was thinking about whether or not she still had time to pick up the dry cleaning today. It kept her from saying anything. If she said
anything, it might be the wrong thing. If she said anything, she might make a mistake.

“Well,” said Charlie. “You certainly made my day off.” He kissed her hands. She looked at the ceiling. They'd had it painted just two years ago, but already there was a web-thin crack around the light fixture.

“Are you okay?” He rolled over, looked at her face. She glanced at him, but it felt too dangerous to answer, so she just nodded.

“Good,” he said. “Jogging is clearly good for me.” He was flexing his legs now, enjoying his own muscles. Reeva laughed. It was a relief.

“I guess maybe we could go out to lunch instead of that coffee?” she said. When had they gone out to lunch last—a thousand years ago? She used to come in to Hackensack, to meet him at the mall for lunch. They'd discussed orthodontia and new bikes at the food court. Once they'd even gone to a matinee, but after he became partner, he couldn't leave for that long and she'd stopped. She remembered the sweet sesame oil taste of the noodles he liked. She licked his fingers, which tasted of her.

He had been more aggressive than usual, he had been so purposeful. She wondered whether he'd planned the days off as sex days, the way they used to plan their sex for the tiny slot of time on Sundays when all the kids had playdates or pickup games. He called it Sunday school. She told him she needed to catch up on her catechism. Why had she forgotten all this? Why had she ever cheated on him, crumpled up their
past like newspaper around dog shit? She started chewing on her fingernail, a habit she'd broken in grade school with Lee Press On Nails and desire.

“You know who I saw when I was jogging? Abigail Stein. She's holding up pretty well, though they still don't know where her daughter went.”

Reeva bit her cuticle, and it started to bleed. “I hope it wasn't an abduction,” she said. Abduction sounded like abortion. Maybe she'd been pregnant. That Abigail Stein was so hard to read, but it couldn't be easy. Reeva remembered when she told Beth about Johnny's ADD how Beth had nodded her head, so sage, so superior, and said, “Someday they'll figure out it was something the mothers did when they were pregnant.” As if Reeva weren't Johnny's mother. As if that weren't an accusation.

“They don't know,” he said. “I was thinking we might need an alarm system. What do you think?” He was running his hands through his hair now, sitting up, looking in the mirror. Did he have a thing for Abigail Stein? Impossible. She was pretty enough, but far from his type. She hardly wore makeup, and her eyebrows were so thick. When did she start jogging? Reeva tried to imagine her neighbor in motion, those large breasts swaying as she moved. Jealousy nicked at her organs, a small, vicious animal. She looked at her husband, wondering. Had he been thinking about Abigail Stein while he was taking her from behind at the window? No—she was the cheater; she was the one who had thoughts like that.

“She's holding up well,” he said again, and Reeva could imagine him then, holding up those big breasts. Her neck was stiff and her thighs were sore and even though she had come, several times, maybe she only enjoyed the idea of it; the actual action didn't work as well for her as she'd hoped. He was her husband, for god's sake, they'd had sex a million times at least (“Be specific,” Charlie might say. “Is it actually a million?”) and now he was talking about Abigail Stein, who was supposed to be part of
her
day, not part of his day. Sex made her want to weep, made her want to be moved, made her angry and anxious and satisfied all at the same time. Jordan would've left for town already; she was too late to be seen on her way to the Steins' house. She was not going to think about him anymore, and she was not going to help Abigail Stein because clearly Abigail already had friends enough. Reeva pulled a bra from the drawer.

“I liked it without,” her husband said, leering at her. No, he was being sexy, he was being sweet.

“Where do you want to go for lunch?” she asked, wrestling the bra back into place.

There was a clatter in the hallway; the heavy hoofbeats of one of her children come inside downstairs. Reeva left the bedroom before she could change her mind again.

“Ma,” said Tina, standing at the foot of the stairs, gripping the BLT in foil like a dirty diaper. “What's in here?”

“Your lunch for tomorrow,” said Reeva, sighing.

“I already ate the carrots,” said Tina. There was chocolate on her chin. That, too, thought Reeva. Still, Tina was so clean,
so unlined, so fresh in her terry mini and tank top. Reeva thought her daughter might have sex soon, and the thought made her want to vomit. She gagged a little.

“I can't believe you wrapped it in foil,” said Tina. “It's so wasteful. Why didn't you just use cellophane?”

Reeva gasped, maybe because of the nausea, maybe because her daughter had used the word. Since when did Tina say cellophane? She said
plastic wrap
. She didn't say cellophane. Only Jordan said cellophane. Her daughter turned away, eating her sandwich and swishing back into the kitchen. The skirt was too short. Her shirt was too tight; her beauty made it difficult for Reeva to fill her lungs with breath.

26 SYCAMORE STREET

S
ince the newspaper article, the teenage girls—and occasional sheepish boy—had hovered about the Stein house, leaving only between the hours of midnight and nine or ten, when they sat on the curb drinking coffee—and, upon occasion, smoking, which Abigail found contemptible. Who let their kids smoke—and out in the world? It was a vigil—Mom's green-tea-jasmine-scented forty-dollar candles in hand, little bouquets of flowers from gardens or plastic blossoms from the Rite Aid clustered around an enlarged, laminated copy of the paper with the graduation photo. It reminded Abigail, nauseatingly, of a highway shrine.

In fact, she overheard Tina Sentry this morning, sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk atop what was probably a two-hundred-dollar cashmere throw, talking to a friend who wore brown lipstick and teeny tiny shorts with a crop top, scarlet. “It is totally cool, I am so in favor of this—and you never know who you'll see”—she flicked the pleated end of her skirt as the young man from Starbucks walked past, toward Mr. Leonard's house—“but I like would have preferred, like, a shrine, you know, when you leave the stuff? I
mean, it's not like we couldn't still check it out, but a vigil is like, all the time. It would be easier to maintain.”