I’m sure Nicolet, Burgess, and Brian would all laugh at a lawyer on a billboard, but it sticks in my head.
I’ll fight for you.
What would that feel like?
I’m married to one of the richest men in the world.
I do have the money to find out.
2
CORA
I makean appointment with Drake Chambers as soon as I get back to Connecticut, and then I throw myself into building a barricade between me and the terrible thing inside me, looming like a frozen tsunami, waiting for God knows what to crash.
Adrian stays in the city for the weekend. I block him on my phone, so he has to call Vera, our German housekeeper, to tell her he won’t be back until late Monday.
I spend the weekend evacuating from my marriage. After I lock my engagement ring and wedding band in the library safe, I sort my clothes into practical and impractical. I move the jeans, yoga pants, sweaters, and T-shirts into a dresser in the nursery and cram the gowns, pantsuits, and furs into trash bags. I tell Vera to take them to a consignment shop or sell them online and keep the money.
There’s already a daybed in the nursery that I crash on when Adrian is out of town, and like everything in the house, the mattress is top of the line. It’s almost comforting to be in a twin bed again, drifting off to the sound of little kids squirming and farting in their sleep.
The past five years always felt like an impossible dream.I was right all along. It couldn’t be real. I’m not destroyed. I’m just awake again.
If you never really had something, you can’t lose it, and if you don’t let yourself feel, nothing they do can hurt you. These are things I’ve always known. I only forgot for a while.
Adrian comes home on Monday at his usual time. I’m finishing up Winnie’s bath, getting her ready for bed, and Pearl is watching her programs. She doesn’t like TV made for kids. She’ll only watch live action shows where guys fish in bad weather or do experiments with catapults. Those must be Adrian’s genes at work. I can’t watch someone’s dad mansplain to a camera for more than a minute before my mind wanders.
The window in the nursery bathroom overlooks the front drive, so I watch Adrian pull up in his Scorpion. He loves that vehicle. It’s not an ordinary car, it’s a “supercar,” which apparently means irresponsibly fast and ungodly expensive.
Adrian unfolds himself from the low driver’s seat impeccably dressed per usual in a gray suit. I watch the top of his dark head as he strides into the house, briefcase in hand.
How many times did he fuck Delaney this weekend?
We usually do it most nights. Adrian has a high sex drive, and I like to please him. Until the other day, I would’ve sworn that I satisfied him. I get off some of the time, if I’ve had a few glasses of wine, and I can get out of my head.
I wouldn’t say he’s bad at sex or lazy. He tries harder with me than it looks like he does with Delaney. I’ve never ridden him when his pants were still on, but I can’t pretend I’m so much better than her, can I?
I did marry him after I’d only known him for six months and got pregnant immediately. I signed a prenup that I didn’t really read. Dumbest of all, I convinced myself that heloved me even though he never said he did. Is there such a thing as a gold digger for love? Clearly, I was mining in the wrong place.
I dry Winnie off, wrestle her wriggly little pink body into her sleep sack, and call for Pearl. Pearl always “helps” me read a story to Winnie before we put her to bed, and then Pearl and I watch TV together until it’s time for her to go to bed. Occasionally, Adrian will make it home in time to read with us. He’s home in time tonight, but he doesn’t come up.
We climb into the daybed, and Pearl readsThat’s Not My Pony . . ., gently pressing Winnie’s tiny baby fingers into the horse’s squashy red plastic saddle and stroking them down the horse’s soft hairy nose. Winnie is more interested in pulling Pearl’s shiny blonde hair and bending over to gum Pearl’s chubby hand.
Sometimes I think that babies are more animal than human. Not in a bad way, but in how there is no check on their impulses at all. They see something interesting, and bam, it goes into their mouth. They hit a minor inconvenience, and bam, they wail like they’ve lost their best friend.
I find it hard to believe I was ever like that. The wail inside me is so deep down I don’t think anyone has ever heard it.
After Pearl and I watch a thirty-minute show about how Swiss cheese is made, I supervise her big girl bath and tuck her in. She’s already asleep when I kiss her forehead. I’m considering whether I want to take a shower myself when there is a soft knock at the nursery door.
My heart leaps even though I know immediately by the tentativeness that it’s not Adrian. He wouldn’t knock, either.
I pad across the suite and crack the door. Vera is standing in the hall, her face carefully blank. “Sorry to disturb you, Mrs. Maddox. Mr. Maddox wanted me to let you know that dinner is served in the family dining room.”
All I can do is stare at her for a second. Adrian really expects me to have dinner with him like nothing happened? I guess so. What was it he said?I suggest you find it within yourself to move past this.
What is it exactly “within myself” that’ll let me eat with a man who I thought was the only person who ever loved me—which turned out to be the biggest delusion of my life?
Is that grit? Mrs. Flowers always praised my grit. I always thought that was a nice way to say that I could eat a lot of shit and keep going.
