He grins. “That’s because it’s true. Don’t search for the most outlandish explanation, because the obvious one is usually true.”
“But sometimes itiszebras. Zebras do exist, you know.”
“Do you want me to call your client and tell her you’ve suffered a concussion and won’t be available for a few days?”
“Who, Petula? No, I don’t want you to do that,” I snap. “She already thinks I’m old. I don’t want to give her any excuse to go hire someone else.”
“That’s not going to happen. You’re great at what you do. You’re not going to lose a client because you take a few days.”
I chew on my toast rather than argue with him. Those first grueling three months of applications with no responses, interviews that went nowhere, and networking events that drained me made it clear that I wasn’t going to get a job that paid what I had been earning. I needed to pivot, so I finally launched as a freelance events coordinator just to have something to do. You’d think more than twenty years in the corporate sector as an events planner would count for something, but the jobs I am qualified for are fewer, and no one seems to want to hire an overqualified Gen Xer, especially one who added two spaces after every period on her résumé before she discovered that aged her more than leg warmers. “Petula is already hinting that I’m too old and out of touch. When I took her to an event space a few weeks ago, she started to take the stairs and then said to me, ‘Oh sorry, you probably want to take the elevator.’”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“She thinks I’m old! If I tell her I’ve had memory loss, it’ll be like blood in the water. I have to get back to work by the end of the week. Plus, I have a screening interview at the Asher Museum today. I really want that job.”
“Just keep in mind what the doctor said.”
When he kisses me on the top of my head, I try to relaxand enjoy the affection, but it’s difficult when I feel this gulf between us. Doesn’t he get it? Bit by bit, my identity is being stripped away. I sit at the island drinking my coffee as the sound of drawers being opened and closed in the upstairs bedroom drifts down. I know he loves me, but I’ve never felt further away from him than I do now.
Over the past few years, we’ve spoken openly about how to reconnect once the kids are gone. We aren’t distant like some couples, but we aren’t like Kenya and Shawn, who can’t keep their hands off each other. No one tells you the toll that parenting takes on a marriage. In theory, now is the time to refocus on us—we are free to travel, I could finally learn pickleball and join the neighborhood team, we could have regular date nights at cool restaurants in downtown DC.
But this morning that vision seems more distant than ever. I feel betrayed by his skepticism. Even if he does harbor doubts about the Ambien or the bottle of wine, I want him to defend me, believe me, or at least try to.Fight for me.After more than twenty years of being a good partner and wife, I deserve as much.
After he leaves for work, I take my own shower and dress. If I can’t get ride-or-die loyalty from Miguel, I’ll have to go somewhere else.
“I believe you.” Yumi raises her coffee cup and smiles. “Of course you’d never take Ambien if you’d been drinking. Duh.”
The words are a balm to me, and I soak them in. Yumi’s screened-in porch sits high in the trees, wrapped in the hum of early summer—the buzz of crickets and back-and-forth of chirping birds. A fan above turns lazily, moving air that smellsfaintly of newly mown grass and the fresh pot of coffee between us. A blue mug for me, a delicate white porcelain cup for Yumi. Mismatched, but then again so are we in a way.
We met the first week of kindergarten. I was waiting outside the school for Zach to come out, pushing Rachel back and forth in the stroller so she wouldn’t fuss. Yumi had cut through the cliques of chatting moms, a pencil keeping her long hair in a topknot, and made a beeline for me. “Hi, I’m Ryan’s mom. Can Zach come over and play? You guys are welcome too.”
Yumi was my first “mom friend” in the neighborhood, and she is still as direct yet warm as she was that first day that we met fifteen years ago. We’ve seen each other through rough times—Yumi’s divorce and diagnosis of an autoimmune disease, and Rachel’s issues in high school—and celebrated each other’s wins. If there’s one person I could call on a rainy night to ask for help in hiding the body, it’s Yumi.
Now we both sit in our favorite seats as we have over so many years, I on the settee with the striped cushion and Yumi in a wicker chair, legs folded underneath her.
“I told him I didn’t take it,” I say, my voice rising. “And you should have seen the way he looked at me, like—like I was lying. Like I had something to hide.”
“I don’t get it. Why wouldn’t he believe you?”
“I don’t know. I was thinking about that the whole walk over here.” I slip off my sandals and dig my toes into Kugel’s fur. “I mean, I get why he was like that in front of the police. I don’t like it, but I get it. He’s so analytical and logical, and seeing the empty wine bottle in the trash just didn’t make sense to his brain. Fine. But he had time to sleep on it, reflect, and this morning, it was almost worse. Like he had decided for sure.”
“Maybe he’s scared,” Yumi says, shifting the binoculars she uses for bird-watching so she can stretch out her legs and put her feet up on the coffee table. “I mean, he comes back from Rehoboth, you’ve got a concussion. You’re in the ER. Maybe the whole thing freaked him out, and he just wants the most obvious answer because he wants the problem fixed. Because the alternative is too scary.”
“It is scary, isn’t it?” I ask. “I really do think that someone came into my house and put that bottle in my trash.”
“And you’re a hundred percent sure you didn’t drink it?” Yumi asks it gently, but without hesitation. It’s the same gentle firmness she uses as a college coach when she has to let parents know their little Jaxon might not be Harvard material. “You can tell me.”
I shoot her a look. “Of course I’m sure. I would tell you if I did. You know that.”
“I know you would. And the Millie’s takeout?”
I shake my head. “That wasn’t me. I know it in my bones. Don’t ask me to explain how, don’t tell me, ‘Oh you don’t remember Saturday night so blah blah.’ I just know.”
“Whoever ordered the Millie’s would have to be someone who knows you. Someone who knows you use CJ as your name.”
“That’s in my DoorDash account. So anyone who accessed my phone to order a meal…”
“Oh,” she says. “You think someone hacked your phone.”
