Bram
I saw two patients, and it took far more composition than I had to keep it together.
I spent the rest of the day in my office pouring over every detail of my old life as seen through my wife’s eyes. Diary entries, a minutia of life most of which I don’t recall. I picture myself as a seasoned politician on the stand as the prosecution pelts me with questions. I’ve turned into the blowhard you laugh at on TV. The Johnny One Note that saysI don’t recallon a loop. I don’t recall your honor.
Did you sleep around on your wife?
“I plead the fifth,” I say, pushing the fat stack of Simone’s delusions away from me.
Who were those people? Is that truly the way she saw us? Simone stomped rose-colored glasses under her heel. She didn’t wear them. This is not who we were, but she nailed the ending. She knew about Loretta. She caught me red-handed.
“God.” I slam my palm down over my desk. I wish I could apologize. I wish I could take it all back. My God, Simone died with our baby in her belly.
The room seizes for a moment as I recall the coroner’s findings. There was no baby inside of her the day she died. At least not according to the coroner. She must have lost it. My ridiculous, stupid, stupid affair must have riddled my poor wife with anxiety, filled her with enough toxic fury I inadvertently killed my own child.
My body bucks with grief at the thought. I knew that I was a monster. Deep down, I knew it was true, but this highlights the evidence on a whole new level.
So this is how Ree knew that I wasn’t an honest man. If I cheated on Simone, the deck was already stacked against her. Astrid had very little to do with the equation. It was Simone and my screwed-up actions that led my new wife, the one who has held every piece of my heart right from the beginning, to believe the very worst in me.
Simone and I were wooden. We were off the rails before we ever began. We never should have gone as far as we did. I’d like to think we both knew that. What Simone and I had was vinegar that set our teeth on edge. What Ree and I have is a cool, refreshing drink of water. And because I couldn’t keep it in my pants and walk away like a man, I buried my first marriage and my last. There won’t be another after this. There is no one for me but Ree. I’ll go to the grave to prove it if I have to.
My fingers swirl around the collection of my wife’s thoughts, her inner workings clicking like a locomotive churning up, building speed. I have my own memories, too—the children’s birthday parties, the bunny who my mother had show up one Easter and terrified poor Isla. And because Isla cried, so did Henry. The trips to the lake. The one we took in August the year before everything went to shit. Henry caught three brown trout. Isla caught five. Simone slept on the deck. It was like hauling a corpse around with us. I remember thinking that at the time. Simone hated the boat. She needed her feet on solid ground. The thought of cleaning those fish made her retch. I taught Isla and Henry the fine art of filleting. We had dinner out back over an open fire. I can still smell the smoke, feel the love we shared that day, and I drink it down as if it were a balm that had the power to heal this disease that’s taken over my life—same one that extinguished theirs.
I pull over the red journal, the year before, and wince as I flip through the pages. I want to hear Simone’s take once again. I blew through these pages so fast, I’m ready to take it in, soak up the good life I once had, with my precious babies I miss so damn much.
August, I flip through, no mention of the lake. I flip back to July, to June, nothing. I shoot ahead to September, and there’s not a hint of us heading up there.
I rock back into my chair, trying to hone in on the dates. It was the first week of August. I’m sure of it, because we needed to get back in time for day camp. The exclusive school Isla and Henry were enrolled in had a summer program, two weeks in August. I remember that specifically. Parents bitched about it. We bitched about it. That was a lot of summertime real estate the school was asking us to part with. But the kids had to go. They wanted to see their friends, build forts, watch movies, and get their hands dirty with some good old-fashioned art.
I flip to the first week of August—right year, right week—my blood runs cold.
Peter worked late. Took the kids to the store. Drove to the aquarium. Made a boxed lunch and had a picnic in the backyard. Took the kids out for lunch before seeing a movie downtown.
“What the hell…?” I purge memory after memory—anything I can grasp, only to find that Simone seems to have rewritten history.
A rush of adrenaline hits me as I phone my brother and relay everything in three angry breathes.
“First thing’s first”—his tone is unduly calm, that brotherly tone he invokes when he wants me to pull my shit together—“how did these so-called journals find themselves in your closet to begin with?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I brought the box and didn’t realize what was in it? No, that’s not right. Hell, I”—a vision of those blood red Dutch ovens appearing one day out of the blue comes back to me—“the builders. When I sold the house, the builders sent a box of some pots and pans. Maybe they sent two boxes?”
“Why would Ree keep this from you?”
“Maybe she’s embarrassed? Maybe she forgot?”
“Maybe she wrote them.”
My heart stops a moment. It would be an impossible feat. “No. I think Simone knew I had an affair. I think she caught me in the city with Loretta. But the other details, like I said, she dismissed entire chunks of history and rewrote them to her liking. I don’t get it.”
“Maybe it was a fantasy. Maybe the new baby never existed. Regardless, I don’t want you beating yourself up over it.”
“Too late for that. Listen, I have to go. Ree and I—she hasn’t been herself, and now I know why. I think we need to talk about this, about everything.” Bile creeps up in the back of my throat just thinking about dissecting my past with my beautiful wife, pulling up the organs of something dead and rotten that is destined to stink up the present with its retched foul odor. I envision it a moment, the split belly of a pig, me trying my best to make Ree understand, and I yank up miles of gray intestines, shit squirting out everywhere, splattering the walls, our faces as we come apart at the seams. How in the hell will Ree and I survive this if Simone and I couldn’t?
“There’s something you need to know.” Mace breathes hard into the phone. “Are you sitting?” Another healthy sigh expels from him.
“Give it to me. I don’t have time for bullshit.”
“I got somewhere with the people at Armadillo. It was a woman who rented the vehicle. All cash. You ready for the kicker?”
