She looked at me. “He said you wouldn’t care.”
I felt sick. I hoped it didn’t show. “And you believed him.”
“Yes,” she said simply. Just:yes.
There was a distortion to the scene that wasn’t making sense to me, a great black spot in the center of the lens. From some objective standpoint, it was obvious that I was driving this conversation, but it didn’t feel that way, not at all. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I just can’t believe this is happening right now. I can’t believe I’m talking to a woman who admitted to seducing my husband, and who refuses to show a drop of remorse for it.”
“Seduced.” Shannon looked genuinely surprised. “You think I seduced him?”
“You think you didn’t?”
Shannon brought a hand to her face. She seemed to be having a lot of trouble composing herself. When she spoke, her voice was shaking. “You know, Natalie, I watch the way you treat Caleb. You act like he’s dumb. Like he’s a little kid who needs to be protected or something.” She looked at me. “He’s not as dumb as you think. In fact, I think he’s pretty smart. Look at this.” She made an impatient gesture around the room, but I knew she was referencing the range in its entirety, the barn and the chickens and the cows and the rivers and the mountains and the fences. “He figured out a way for you to create a wet dream for him to live inside, and he found a way for you to do it so that you thought it was your idea. And now he just gets to …exist,in this psychotic little snow globe you built just for him. And in spite of all that, you somehow go on thinking that this was your idea. That you’re the one who’s in control.”
“Thiswasmy idea.”
“Do you know why Caleb likes me so much? It’s because I’m the only person on this farm who treats him like a person, not a project. I listen when he speaks. I ask questions. I call him on his bullshit. I talk to him like I’m a real person. Likeheis a real person—and if he takes that experience and assumes it to mean we’re in love, then all that proves to me is how bad his understanding of relationships really is.”
I felt a firm awareness that I was standing in the most wondrous moment of my own life. “You don’t feel bad at all. You’re a whore. A homewrecker. And you don’t even care.”
Shannon raised her eyebrows. It was the only part of her expression that moved. “Actually,” she said quietly, “I’m not. This is what I’m trying to say to you, Natalie. In order for me to be a homewrecker, you would have to have a home for me to wreck, and you don’t. You don’t even have a family. What you have is a business. Your nannies know it. Your farmhands know it. Your husband knows it. And someday your kids will know it, too. And do you know what? I think they’re going to hate you for it. I think they’ll never forgive you.”
Lord, God, help me.
“Bitch,” I whispered, almost worshipfully. I felt wild. I didn’t know what to do, how to act, what to say. Online, offline. Neither version of myself was prepared for this moment. My head felt dizzy, out of control, like a spinning top. I heard myself say, like some terrible impersonation of a woman I didn’t know, “Was it fun, Shannon? Was it fun getting fucked by a man who can’t even maintain an erection?”
She was supposed to look horrified, or maybe ashamed. Instead, she looked concerned. “Oh God, Natalie—is he not hard when he has sex with you?”
Whoosh.
What’s a lady to do when the floor falls out from under her?
Easy answer: She closes her eyes. Imagines a floor where there isn’t one. Pretends that the twitch in her eye is from lack of sleep.
Worry. Women worry.
Up all night worrying, I suppose!
Good Christian women were great at worrying. They were not, however, good at confrontation. But good Christian men? Born for it.
A good Christian husband and father would have no problem silencing a liar, a cheat, a filthy little whore. A good Christian manwould stand up, cross the room in a single swift movement, and slap Shannon with an open palm.For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it …He would wrap his hands around that selfish bitch’s neck and manually squeeze the air right out of her selfish bitch throat, and meanwhile, back home, his wife would be cleaning the countertops. Thinking about her husband. Worrying.
I really did feel like I was falling. I stared at my hands, trying to make sense of their purchase on Shannon’s neck. I was straddling her on the bed, and she was squirming desperately beneath me. Feet kicking. Her skin was hot beneath my sweaty palms. Rosebud underwear fully exposed, now. Jeans halfway down her thighs. From all the movement, I supposed. She was making an awful whining sound, her fingers fluttering frantically around my grip.
My grip.
My grip?
No. That can’t be right.
But it was. I was squeezing her throat so hard that my knuckles had gone white. It was the recognition of this fact more than anything that caused me to let go. Shannon gasped. I sat back as her hands went where mine had just been, as if to feel for the grooves my grip had left behind.
Morning, y’all! You’ll never believe the morning I’ve had …
I got off the bed, readjusting my blouse, folding back the collar, and smoothing the wrinkles away. One of the buttons on my shirt was missing. It must have popped off when I was—or rather when she was—
No matter. It was a misplaced button. A wrinkled blouse. These were small things. The button, the blouse. Each could be replaced.
“You’re upset,” I said, over Shannon’s panicked sobs. “I should give you some space. You mean so much to us, Shannon. Really.”
