When I found a bag of pot in the garage back in January, Mia said it was her friend’s and promised she’d never tried it. She might have been lying, but it didn’t feel like it at the time. Mia, however, never wears lipstick. She has pink and champagne-colored glosses, but this is Pepto Bismol pink.
Could it belong to whoeverDrinks with Cis? My hands tremble a little as I place the joint on the coffee table and take a deep breath. Stop it. I have to be reasonable. If the pot really belonged to one of Mia’s friends last time, maybe the same pot-smoking friend wears pink lipstick. Rational. Be rational. That doesn’t explain how it got into our laundry, but it’s just as possible as it belonging to Finn’s lover, right?
I misread things, and I get carried away. And it gets me into trouble. I can’t overreact here. I know what that does. A couple years ago when I saw a text on Finn’s phone, I went down the rabbit hole. It said,Hey, babe, can’t wait to see you tomorrow. His wife of twenty-two years should have every right to react any way she likes to seeing a message like that, but he explained that it was from Janet Palmer, and that she’s the cool lesbian from Accounting and calls everyonebabe, and that she was looking forward to seeing him at a company mixer because they were planning a funny prank on the managers.
I’ll give it to him that if he were lying, it was detailed and very quick thinking. At the time I was sobbing and screaming at him, demanding to know the truth. When he asked me if I wanted to see the texts before that one—the ones where he asked her whether Andy Keat was stopping for the supplies or if he needed to get anything, I pushed his phone away and threw it at him, then ran upstairs and locked myself in the bathroom.
He was going to prove the conversation was innocent, but I ruined my chance to know for sure. Now, I wonder if he really was going to show me the text thread. He knew I was hysterical and how I respond when I’m like that. I don’t think he ever planned on showing me the exchange. He would have found a way out of it even in the heat of the moment, waving his phone in my face, denying everything. I don’t know how, but I know he would have.
I wouldn’t let it go. I showed up at his job, tosurprise himby taking him to lunch, trying to get a glimpse of lesbian Janet, but I never did. He saw through my attempts, of course, and every time I found him at a work dinner and peered through the front window to make sure the attendees were who he said, or each time I followed him to the gym only to wait in the parking lot to see if he left with some muscly bimbo, he pushed me further away, and the screaming matches became a nightly event.
It was the little things that added up—all theDrinks with Csort of notes when it should really sayRetirement party. There was always an explanation, though, so I was always just the crazy and paranoid wife. I felt that way, anyway. Between accusations, I sobbed and asked for forgiveness every time he proved himself innocent. I told myself that I was wrong and, if I wanted to stay married, I had to let it go, but I always had this shadowy feeling, and it was almost becoming an addiction, trying to catch him.
Then one night Paige texted. She was purchasing wine for the restaurant at a little bottle shop/tasting-room place downtown, and she snapped a photo of Finn sitting at a candlelit table with a waifish redhead. I remember feeling paralyzed, sitting there at my bedroom vanity, plucking my eyebrows and sipping ginger tea. I stared at the photo. I could see that glossy, shy look in his eyes—the kind accompanied by an audible swallow and a nervous laugh. I know that glint. It’s a touch of insecurity masked as self-assuredness. I looked at their wineglasses, their hands too close together, then I looked at the silver watch on his wrist that I’d given him on our second wedding anniversary, brushing the side of her impossibly thin arm, and lost my mind.
I have little memory of driving to the bar. I just remember knowing it was my one chance to catch him in the act. I was right. I had been goddamned right all along, and this was it. Thinking back to what a cow I must have looked like, storming in there in a terry-cloth robe and slipper socks, I could just about die with the shame of it. Not to mention I was not wearing makeup and had dots of eye cream beneath my eyes.
“You wanna call me crazy now? Am I still fucking delusional?” I screamed when I reached their small table by the front windows. The place was a small, moody wine bar with only a few other tables, and of course everyone stopped and looked. I didn’t care. Tears blurred my eyes, and my life of single motherhood and perpetual bitterness, and the pity of everyone, was all that flashed before me, blinding me.
“Cora, let’s go outside. Come on,” Finn said, leaping to his feet instinctively, like I was some unhinged wife and he had to do this kind of thing all the time. He shot the redhead an apologetic look, and that’s when I really lost it.
“Don’t fucking touch me,” I yelled, yanking my wrist away from his grip. “You liar. He’s a fucking liar,” I said to the small woman, who just sat there, still holding her wine, with her mouth agape. “Did you know he was married? Yeah, the son of a bitch is married with a kid to boot. Did he mention that?”
“Cora!” Finn snapped and tried to grab my arm again. The man from behind the bar came over and started to ask something stupid like “Is everything okay?” but I don’t recall exactly what.
The small redhead picked up her handbag and started to say “Maybe I should...” but I broke away from Finn’s grip and flipped the table. Both glasses of red wine smashed, smattering onto the woman’s pale silk blouse. Some of the glass cut through the material and into the tops of her forearms. She sat in silent shock, looking like a murder victim who had been stabbed through the heart but hadn’t fallen over dead yet. The bartender screamed at Finn to get me out of there while someone else called a medic. He said they were calling the police, but the redhead insisted they shouldn’t. Then, suddenly, I was outside.
Finn pulled me into the car and told me if I didn’t stay there and settle down, he’d call the police himself and press charges and I’d be headed for a psych eval. I stayed there, sobbing, beating the dashboard as he went back in to take care of his little slut girlfriend. Half an hour later, he returned. He said he’d drive me home in his car because I was in no state to drive. He didn’t look at me or speak for a long time. Then, when we were almost home, he said, “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
I didn’t answer.
“You’re lucky. Sheshouldpress assault charges. But at least the glass didn’t... It could have been a lot worse. You could have...” He stopped and took a deep breath, then just shook his head.
“I don’t care,” I said defiantly, looking out the passenger window. “You should go stay somewhere else tonight.”
“Oh, I plan to.”
“Good,” I said, and then silence again.
“You just cost me,us, a lot of money, you know that? ’Cause you had to act like a paranoid psychopath. She was a top client who was discussing her company expansion, which would have been a huge chunk of business for me. I can’t even believe what you just did. Is this just how you are now? Look at you!” He slammed his hand on the steering wheel, and I became painfully aware of how much I must have resembled a fat, demented Xena, Warrior Princess, flipping a table like that with one hand in my giant pink robe and eye cream. My suspicions gave way to immeasurable shame when I realized what I had done.
And if I’m honest, we’ve never been the same since. I went to therapy, and he finally said he forgave me after months of silent dinners and avoidance. It was probably because she only had minor cuts on her arms and ended up giving him her business anyway, no doubt out of pity, and because they had laughed and bonded over his pathetic wife who must be such a burden to bear. Nonetheless, things slowly went back to near normal.
Now, two years later, I cannot afford to ask him if this joint belongs to the redhead who may or may not really have been a client or if it belongs toDrinks with C.
I decide to ask Mia about it instead. Shortly after I found that bag of weed in the garage months ago, she had an incident with the car. She hit a pole while pulling into a Trader Joe’s parking lot. She seemed removed and distracted around that time, too. Maybe shewaslying to me about it? Something was going on.
I abandon my pile of laundry and go upstairs to have a look in her room. Her laptop sits open on her desk, but I tell myself that looking would be an invasion of privacy, and at this juncture I’m not willing to cross that line yet—not unless I think she’s in real trouble. Also, I don’t have the password. Otherwise, if I’m honest, I probably would. Just to check on her well-being, of course. But before I can even open a drawer, I hear a key in the door and footsteps lumbering up the stairs. I barely exit her doorway before Mia is in front of me, tossing her backpack on the floor and stopping to look at me.
“Hi!” I say, too loudly, accompanied by a forced, too-big smile.
“Why are you being weird?” she says, looking me up and down. When I don’t quickly come up with an answer, she gives a sort of shrug.
“’K. I’m gonna go in here now,” she says in that condescending teenage way and then flops on her bed, already with phone in hand. I remember then that there’s a teachers’ conference, so it’s a half day, and no, she didn’t sense my spying somehow and materialize just in time to hide her drugs.
I stand in her doorway, holding the joint that she hasn’t noticed yet and wait for her to look up from her phone. She finally senses me looking at her and raises her eyebrows at me.
“What?” she asks.
