difference between my spending two hours or two days every month on the newsletter. But Mike was afraid of alienating his older, less techno-savvy clients, so I just kept buying that stupid themed stationery. It became another thing I was expected to do to make Mike’s life easier.
He loved the idea of the report. He loved the friendly personal touch with the clients and what it did for the business. He just didn’t want to have to do it himself.
It was now 4:24 p.m. Mike was due home in an hour. I had a roast in the oven and it would dry out it if I didn’t check on it in the next ten minutes. But the idea of getting out of bed was a mountain I was not prepared to climb.
“Get up,” I muttered to myself. “Get up.”
But my limbs stayed where they were, leaden, tired, stubborn. Maybe I would lie here long enough to die and Mike would have to explain the soggy, woebegone corpse in his master suite.
After convincing myself that I didn’t want to be found dead in my bathrobe, I crawled back into the shower, running it on cool to try to take the swelling down in my face. I looked into the little shatterproof shaving mirror and swiped at my eyes, which seemed to be a little less puffy. I didn’t like having the mirror in our shower because the suction cups left weird little soap-scum circles on the glass door. But Mike insisted that his mornings would be much easier if he could just shave in the shower, so I’d spent the better part of an afternoon hunting down the best mirror I could find. Just like I’d spent countless afternoons doing countless stupid little errands because they were important to Mike. I’d wasted most of my twenties doing his stupid little errands.
Somewhere in my stomach, the tight, miserable little ball of tension bubbled to my lips in the form of: “Asshole!” I screamed, yanking the mirror off the door and throwing it against the wall. “How could you fucking do this to me, you miserable, dickless piece of shit!”
I picked up the mirror again and brought it crashing down on the floor, stomping on it, doing my best to break it. But the damn thing was shatterproof. I was just making noise, empty, stupid pointless noise that no one would hear. I slid down the tile wall, collapsing in a heap on the floor.
I wasn’t going to cry anymore. I was tired of making empty noise.
I blew a shallow breath through my teeth and pushed to my feet, putting my face under the cool spray. I wondered how close Mike was to the house. Was he actually coming home tonight or did he have another “meeting”? Either way, I didn’t want him to find me like this. I needed time, to think, to decide, to plan. I needed focus to keep myself from knocking him out the minute he walked through the door and supergluing his dick to the wall.
“Get up, you giant cliche,” I said, my voice stern, cold. “Get up. Get your ass out of this shower and stop re- enacting scenes from every Lifetime movie ever made. Get up. Get up. Get up!”
I sat up, brushing the wet, snaggled hair out of my face. “Now brush your damn teeth.”
I am an emotional person. It’s one of the reasons Mike said I would never make a decent accountant. (That and needing a calculator to perform long division.) Mike was always in control of his emotions. Though, not apparently, in control of his penis. He would not expect me to remain calm, cool, and unaffected in the face of his pantsless office hijinks.
So I got up, got dressed, and waited. I smiled when Mike managed to make it home for dinner and served him pot roast. I told him about my Junior League meeting that morning and acted like the problems we were having printing this year’s charity cookbook were the biggest worries on my mind. And I slept beside him, having to concentrate hard to prevent myself from smothering him with the pillow.
It was the last thing he would see coming. The calm thing, I mean, not the smothering. Though he probably wouldn’t see the pillow coming either.
In my weaker moments, I considered forgetting this whole thing and staying with him. For one thing, you can’t discount eight years of history. My parents were very fond of him. My parents and his parents seemed to enjoy spending time together, a rare and precious coincidence that meant I never had to split my holidays. And Mike was safe. He was stable. Apart from the receptionist-screwing, he had been a decent husband to me. I didn’t have to worry about bills being paid or him drinking too much or watching an alarming amount of Sports Center.
We’d made a life together. It wasn’t perfect, but I was proud of what we’d built. Even if he’d smashed it all to hell by betraying the unspoken rule I thought we’d both agreed to - don’t have sex with other people.
And at other, angrier moments, I found my hands gripping the edge of the kitchen table as I stared at my husband. Mike had retained the blond, boyish good looks that had drawn me to him when we were seniors in high school. The sun-streaked sandy blond hair that curled just at the ends. The guileless brown eyes that crinkled when he smiled. The little cleft in his chin that his mama called “God’s thumbprint.”
Mike was equally tense. He wouldn’t look me in the eye. His knee was bouncing steadily under the table, a sure sign he was nervous about something. He didn’t even complain about our dinner menu of blackened catfish and Mama’s “Light Your Fire” cheese grits. Mike hated spicy food with a passion. He treated Taco Bell like exotic third- world cuisine.
I said I was trying to behave as normally as possible. I didn’t say I was a saint.
Finally, he cleared his throat and asked, “Honey, did Cherry Click stop by here with some flowers a few days ago?”
So that’s why he was wound so tight, I mused. He’d been stewing for days, wondering where Beebee’s anniversary flowers had ended up. “No.” I said, concentrating on every muscle and nerve in my face to keep it a pleasant, blank mask. “You sweet thing, did you order me flowers?”
He paled ever so slightly as he stammered, “N - no, one of my clients lost his mama. I sent an arrangement, but I don’t think it arrived at the funeral service in time.”
Well, that was a far more interesting lie than I would have previously given him credit for. I gave a breathy little gasp. “Oh, no, whose mother died?”
I watched him squirm as he searched for the right answer. “Oh, nobody you know,” he said, picking at his plate. “It’s a client over in Quincy.”
“Oh, well, it was so thoughtful of you to send something. I can call Cherry and double-check whether it arrived.”
“No! No, I’ll take care of it,” he said, far too quickly.
“I don’t mind,” I told him, willing my lips not to curve upward.
“It’s okay, really. Don’t worry about it,” he assured me.
“All right,” I said, shrugging blithely.
His shoulders relaxed and the tense little lines around his mouth disappeared. He was comfortable again, sure that I was still in the dark. My fingers gripped my fork, my teeth grinding ever so slightly as I imagined jabbing the tines right into his forehead.
“So, um, how’s the old monthly report coming?” he asked around a mouthful of catfish. “Remember, we have to get it out by next week. You only have a few days left to mail it out.”
I hadn’t looked at it in a week. And somehow I just didn’t think descriptions of Mike’s golf game and repainting the office were going to cut it this month.
“It’s fine,” I lied.
“Be sure to mention the condo. And call down to the office and talk to Beebee,” he added before downing half of his glass of water.
I dropped my fork. But considering my usual level of clumsiness, he didn’t notice. “What?”
“It might be nice to put sort of a getting to know you interview thing in this month’s letter,” he told me. “She’s been with us for a while, but some of the clients haven’t met her yet.”
My mouth dried up. He actually wanted me to talk to the woman he was screwing behind my back? Did he have no shame? Didn’t that make him the least bit nervous at all? Apparently he trusted Beebee enough not to spill everything to me. Or he trusted me to be dumb enough not to pick up on any hints Beebee might drop.
“What do you want me to ask her?”
“Oh, the usual stuff,” he said, shrugging and returning his attention to his food. “You’ll figure it out.”
I smiled, my lips stretched so tight, I sensed the coppery sting of blood welling up into my mouth. “Oh, sure, just let us girls sort it out.”
