I am halfway down the stairs when the low murmur of Mark’s voice reaches me. I pause and then continue softly, not wanting to be heard, although I cannot articulate to myself why. It’s not that I want to spy on him, yet I am cautious. At the bottom of the staircase, I can hear Mark’s voice coming clearly from the kitchen.
“—and I’m telling you, she knows. She described the car.”
The shock of his words sends me reeling back a step. I grip the banister to right myself, and as my weight shifts from one leg to the other, the stair emits the tiniest of creaks. I hold my breath, praying he did not hear.
“Hello?” Mark calls, and then a few footsteps. “Allie? That you?”
I turn and run up the stairs as quietly as possible like a naughty child. I slip under the covers and squeeze my eyes tight. My heart feels like it is throwing itself against my rib cage, pounding so loudly I am sure Mark would hear it if he entered the room.
Moments later, he does enter.
The door squeaks as it is cracked ajar. I peer through the black bars of my eyelashes of one partially opened eye, not daring to move my head for a better view. All I can see is a sliver of light on the ceiling. I watch it grow wider as the door opens farther, Mark’s elongated shadow stretching taller and taller.
I squeeze my eyes ferociously and breathe in deeply. Time seems to slow down, and the seconds tick by. Finally, the door clicks shut.
I am alone.
38
On Tuesday morning, neither Mark nor I mention what happened the night before. I’m not sure what’s stopping me from just asking him about it, but I want time to think about how I am going to formulate my questions.
And maybe a part of me just does not want to face any more disappointments.
What if his answers are ones I cannot handle?
We stick to the familiar morning dialogue that goes on in suburban households across the country. During our morning routine, I see no good time to announce that I’ve been fired. That’s not a five-minute conversation. It’s not that I want to lie to Mark, but between finding a shirt that doesn’t make Cole itch and packing lunch, it’s easier just to avoid the topic.
Mark does not ask me anything.
He seems preoccupied and distant.
“I’m distracted,” he says when I catch him putting the box of Grape-Nuts in the refrigerator and the milk in the cupboard. “This deposition is turning out more complicated than we thought it would be.”
We both know it’s more than that.
Mark leaves without saying anything, and I can’t help but take it personally. He never leaves without kissing me goodbye.
Curiosity gnaws at me. I rush through getting Cole off to school, allowing him to walk the last half block by himself so I can get home quickly. I’m not sure where to begin or what I am looking for, exactly. I start by opening random drawers, looking for anything that might be a clue as to whom Mark might have been talking to last night. If only I could access his cell phone.
Then I realize I can.
I open my laptop and log in to our shared cell phone account. It takes a while, but I finally navigate to the page with the call logs associated with Mark’s phone.
Nothing. No calls last night.
I frown. Then it hits me. His work phone. Of course he would make any private calls on that. I have no way of checking it.
I hate that I suspect Mark, but I know what I heard last night.
I continue my search in the third bedroom, for which Mark and I have yet to find a use. When we toured the house, Mark said it would be perfect for a nursery, and I said that I’d like to make it a home office for when I start my own studio. Now it looks like neither of us may get our wish.
One side of the room is stacked with moving boxes I haven’t unpacked. They are filled with the sort of knickknacks and odds and ends that stymie even the most type A people, which I most decidedly am not. After two months, I still cannot seem to find the time to tackle them. Where to put the twine, the extra furniture pads, the fifty-dollar collapsible picnic basket we have used once?
I do a preliminary search of Mark’s boxes. Old yearbooks from high school and college. Baseball trophies. Papers he wrote in law school.
But no answers to my gnawing questions.
No hint as to whom he might have been talking to last night.
In a far corner, I find a box marked Allie’s photo stuff. I sit down and pull out film-developing canisters, tongs, and plastic trays that I once slipped paper into and watched as images emerged bit by bit. All rendered obsolete in the digital age.
Mark suggested many times that I should let it all go, sell it on eBay. But I can’t.
Something flat sits at the bottom of the box. I hook one finger under the object and yank it out. In my hands, I hold a scrapbook, one I haven’t opened in more than sixteen years. I stare at the familiar, plain black cover, a bittersweet mixture of nostalgia and shame sweeping over me. I was sure I had thrown this out when we moved Sharon out of the Westport house.
The thick cover, coated with dust, resists as I turn it.
There he is—Paul Adamson.
The shrill sound of my cell phone ringing from downstairs startles me. I ignore it and turn back to the photo album.
Each stiff black page features one single photograph of Paul, as if he were the only person on earth. The photos are devoid of all other humans.
Madeline’s words come back to me. You used
