“Okay, okay. You get it out, and I’ll come help you.”
Sweat had plastered Hailey’s hair to her forehead, and in the bathroom mirror she could already see tiny flecks of red on her cheeks like freckles, burst blood vessels from being so violently sick. Her eyes were rimmed with dark smudges that the makeup remover she reached for didn’t wipe away.
She splashed her face and wobbled into the hallway, keeping an ear out for Mack. The gentle pink of Mabel’s bedroom walls felt like a hug, and Hailey let herself crumple onto the soft carpet. Mabel and Gigi were in their underpants, struggling into their dresses. Hailey didn’t have the energy to remind them to be careful, but she did think to wish for her phone as Mabel buttoned up the back of her sister’s collar.
“Do I look pretty, Mommy?”
“So pretty,” Hailey told Gigi. “Pretty as a picture. You’re both going to be the most beautiful ones there, but more importantly the smartest and the nicest too.” How could such normal parent-speak come from the mouth of someone who had done what Hailey had done? She had let some sort of monster into their lives and didn’t deserve to be here among the stuffed bunnies and the snow globes and the glow-in-the-dark star stickers on the ceiling.
Mabel frowned as she struggled to tie Gigi’s sash. “But no one can see nice and smart, so that doesn’t matter for the party.”
“It always matters,” Hailey told her, and she sat watching them until they were ready to show Mack the dresses and went off to find him. Then she hauled herself up and took Gigi’s discarded nightgown to her bedroom. From the dormer window in there, she spotted Mack and Gulliver coming up the driveway. Mack was wearing a coat over his flannel pajama bottoms and carrying something down at his side, away from the dog. It was a broken wine bottle; Hailey could just make out the pieces in his hand. She stood behind the floral curtain and watched him drop them into the recycling bin. His simple movements gave no hint as to his state of mind. She needed to catch him in front of Mabel and Gigi when he would have to engage with her like a sane person. Hopefully.
It happened in the kitchen, with the girls crowding around him as he fixed them cereal. Even Gulliver stuck close by his ankles, which probably had to do with proximity to food but made Hailey feel even more alone. Mack’s eyes flicked up from the milk he was pouring and stared into Hailey’s with a look that was unmistakable. She had seen it too many times before not to know what it meant: her husband hated her now, and nothing between them would ever be the same. His thing with his student had put them in choppy, dangerous waters; this was a giant, unmissable iceberg, and their marriage was theTitanic. And yet... there was something appealing about him. Something uncharacteristically decisive in his cruelty.
They both stood in silence as the girls crunched their Rice Krispies. Too late Hailey realized that they were sitting there dribbling milk down their chins in half a grand’s worth of children’s couture, but she wasn’t about to kick up a fuss now and make herself the bad guy.
Instead, she inhaled deeply. “What are we going to do?”
There was more crunching, three pairs of eyes watched her—four, counting Gulliver’s—and then, when Mack didn’t speak, Hailey added, “Today, I mean. What are we going to do today?”
“Playmobil,” said Mabel ceremoniously. “All day.” Gigi nodded, and Hailey saw that she’d already bagged the favorite and most contested Playmobil figure and tucked it under her cereal bowl. A fight was coming over that blond piece of plastic with the red-and-white-striped dress and the tiny purse that was always going missing.
Another fight was coming too, but what would kick it off? Hailey sank down onto the stool at the kitchen island.
“Did you and Grandpa fix the townhouse?” Hailey thought longingly of her father wandering around with the half-assembled “City Life” house yesterday.
“I fixed it this morning,” said Mack, with menace.
“It’s onlysort offixed, though. Gigi broke it for good,” Mabel said with her mouth full. “She stepped right in the kitchen—she did it on purpose, Mommy, she did—and now there’s a crack. Now it’s likeourkitchen.” When Hailey looked at her in bewilderment, Mabel jumped down from her chair and half closed the door to the back hall that was always left open. “See?”
Hailey did see, and out of the corner of her eye she saw Mack see too: another crack, about an inch wide at its worst, rose up from the floorboards.
“Jesus.” Hailey felt something like relief at this new point of focus, until Gigi added her two cents:
“That’s not as bad as what Daddy did to the door.” She got down too, and led Hailey through the back hall to the side door to the garage. The aluminum was full of deep dents, and the doorknob was missing.
“What the—” Gigi’s big gray eyes stared up at her, and Hailey stopped herself. “I’m sure it was an accident.” She said it loudly in case Mack was listening. But when they went back through, he had moved into the front hall, and she could hear him on the phone. All three of them could hear him on the phone:
“The thing is,Cletus, I don’t care if it’s a holiday. My goddamn house is falling down, and all you keep talking about is maybe sending this concrete guy. Where the hell is he? Get somebody out here to fix this, or I’m calling a lawyer in and, so help me God, I will sue the shit out of you. Hope you had a nice Thanksgiving. We’re lucky the ceiling didn’t fall in on ours.”
Even though her back was to them, Hailey couldfeelMabel’s and Gigi’s jaws drop. “I know Daddy’s saying some bad words,” she started, “but—”
“And he smokes,” said Mabel. “Did you know that, Mommy? Daddy smokes.”
* * *
Despite everything, Hailey still felt a shot of pride at what they looked like: Mack in a sports coat and his trademark Christmas bow tie, and for no apparent reason his glasses too, as if he knew how much she loved them, as if he knew that those crooked tortoiseshell frames would be what finally shattered her heart. The girls in their new dresses and Mary Janes, velvet ribbons in their freshly washed hair. Even Mabel’s clip-on diamond Disney Princess earrings (a present from Grammie) were mostly hidden by her soft, shiny curls.
Hailey’s own dress was black velvet, with ivory silk bows in a neat row across her back. Mack had wordlessly tied them for her; Mabel wasn’t quite up to the task, and so she’d had no choice but to ask him. Afterward, she’d twisted her hair up so tightly it hurt her scalp and applied makeup like war paint—angry slashes of red blush, crimson lips, three coats of jet-black mascara.
Mack did not look twice. He’d made an obvious point of not even looking once.
They drove the five hundred yards to the Shoreby, because everyone did. The entire front of the grand estate had been spectacularly outlined in Christmas lights, but Hailey did not experience the usual thrill when the valet parking attendant bade her good evening. Instead, she felt dread; dread that this thing between her and Mack would crawl out from underneath the white tablecloths and slither along the silver and the china into the warm candlelight to reveal itself to everyone in the room. And that everyone included Santa Claus himself, Hailey saw. As soon as they’d checked their coats, Mabel and Gigi ran off to join the throngs of children waiting to visit him, leaving her and Mack awkwardly, horribly alone.
Then Mack said, “I’m going to the bar,” and he abandoned her there to the crowd of friends and neighbors, none of whom she really knew. She was about to make her way toward the Santa line too when Allison Murdoch—six boys in seven years—appeared beside her.
“Don’t you look pretty, Hailey,” Allison said, but it came out more like an accusation than a greeting. Hailey felt the bareness of her shoulders and the redness of her lips and was conscious of Allison running her hands through her own short, wash-and-wear hair. Allison had on an ill-fitting navy shift dress with penny loafers and no makeup, even here at this ritzy party deep in plastic-surgery land. Maybe being surrounded by all that testosterone did things to you.
