“I didn’t want to say anything,” he said with a shrug. Then he put his hand on my knee, and I immediately felt myself soften. “Hey, same team, remember?” he said. It was something he’d picked up from Stevie’s preschool soccer coach, who had hollered it at the girls when they stole the ball from each other.
“I know,” I said quietly. “It’s just . . . I want our marriage to be healthier. I know we’re not Jenny and Matt, but we’re not ourselves anymore, either.”
“People change, Penny,” he said. “We’re not young and childless anymore. Are you really unhappy?”
Unhappy? Yes—at least more often than I wanted to be.
The bigger issue was that I was afraid. Because I had been spending way too much time thinking about how nice it would be to escape the ever-mounting pressures of our life. Before Jenny’s death I told myself this was a normal fantasy for a woman under duress. But now the stakes had been revealed, and they were much higher than I had ever imagined. I could no longer pretend I was a normal woman. I was one whose mother had taken a permanent leave of absence from her family. And I didn’t want to follow her lead—or Jenny’s, for that matter.
If my father were to be believed, my mother had not suffered from mental illness. “She was selfish,” he said by way of an explanation when I had been old enough to press him for a real answer about why she left. “End of story.”
In truth, it was just a fraction of the story. In one of my clearest childhood memories, I am standing in our small kitchen shortly after my mother left, deeply unnerved by the silence. Where are my parents’ yelling voices? Where are the sounds of slamming doors, stomping on stairs, screeching tires? As long as I had been conscious, I had been aware my parents disliked each other. I wasn’t even sure they had ever loved each other—though at some point her wild-child soul must have been attracted to his workaholic ways, as they had chosen to marry and have two children.
Yet as bad as it had been when they were together, it was worse after my mother left. I had sworn to myself that if I ever had a family, things would be different for us. No one would be yelling. And no one—no one —would be leaving.
For all my thoughts of running away, I would never abandon my children (though it occurred to me that Jenny must have told herself that very thing). And Sanjay and I weren’t my parents. We did love each other, even if we struggled at times to like each other, and we weren’t yellers or prone to dramatics. Our arguments were more like a series of fissures.
But even a solid foundation could crumble from one too many cracks. I was willing to bet Jenny had not gone into her marriage thinking it would end up the way it did. Or that the first pill would lead to her last breath.
There were things that weren’t right between me and Sanjay. And it was time to admit that before something terrible happened.
We sat in silence. The plan that had seemed so crisp and clear just a few minutes earlier was already shapeless. Was it really smart to tell Sanjay the truth? To ask—and expect—more of him? How would I do that, and what did I want, anyway?
“We can work out the details later,” I finally said. “I guess I just needed you to know this is a priority, and I want to do something about it. And I hope you do, too.”
“I do,” said Sanjay, but then he said nothing for a very long time.
“Well, what is it?” I eventually asked. “What do you think?”
“What do I think?” He opened his mouth and shut it. Then he sighed deeply. At last he said, “To be honest with you, Penny, I worry that too much honesty might be a bad idea.”
TWELVE
“Howdy!”
I had just poured myself a cup of coffee and walked into the living room when Lorrie came flying through the front door.
I startled, spilling hot coffee all over my pants. They were my last clean pair, and while they were at least black, I now would either have to walk around smelling like dark roast or spot-clean a dirty pair and hope a quick tumble in the dryer would remove the wrinkles.
I wiped my dripping mug with my free hand and turned to my neighbor. “Lorrie, what are you doing here? It’s not even eight yet.” This came out as a squeak, making me sound more nervous than irritated, which I was. It had taken me a good forty-five minutes to pass out again after talking to Sanjay, and I had barely been able to pull myself out of bed that morning. Our talk must have jolted Sanjay, because he had gotten up at the same time I did. But I was still running behind and needed to locate a clean cardigan to throw over my camisole before we finished getting the kids ready.
And now deal with my wet pants and pour myself a fresh cup of coffee.
“The door was open, and I saw the littles playing on the porch. Figured you were up and at ’em,” said Lorrie, entirely too perky.
Lorrie had moved in across the street from us four years earlier. One morning soon after, she had come marching over with a basket of muffins. She was a chemistry professor at the university and a single mom to two-year-old Olive. She had smiled at Miles and said wouldn’t it be nice if our kids could be friends?
She was an odd one—that was clear from the get-go. But she was smart and friendly, and I felt a little bad for her, which in retrospect is a lousy reason to invite someone into your life. When she crossed the street at the end of the day to chat with me, I welcomed her conversation. When she suggested we take our children to the park to play on Saturday mornings, I agreed—or at least I did in the beginning, before Olive began chomping on Miles like a teething biscuit every time I took my eyes off him for half a second.
But then I would come home from a long day at work and she would be waiting on the porch, waiting to yap my ear off for the next hour. She started knocking and then sticking her head in the door to call for me. More recently—maybe because I had stopped answering when I heard her yodeling—she had taken to walking straight into our house. I had made plenty of comments such as, “We’re about to eat dinner,” or “You scared me,” but I could not bring myself to have the Talk with her.
I suspected this was because in my mind, such a conversation would prompt Lorrie to ask, “Do you still want to be friends?” and I would either have to lie to her and say yes, or admit that no, I did not, and in fact I deeply regretted not taking the advice I gave my children by accepting treats from someone I didn’t know. Which would make it awfully awkward to be neighbors.
“Don’t you need to get Olive ready for camp?” I asked.
“Oh, she’s home, happy as a clam on the ol’ iPad,” said Lorrie, waving in the direction of her house. She was wearing a shirt that said, “Hos before bros.” I started to smile because I knew I would text Jenny the minute I pushed Lorrie out the door to tell her about my latest home invasion.
Then reality set in, and it felt like a boulder had just fallen on my chest.
Lorrie prattled on, telling me all about how the good folks of Silicon Valley were helping Olive make major strides toward independence. (And thank God, since she had left the child home alone.) After a minute or two of this, she tilted her head. “You look tired. Is now a bad time?”
Yes. Now was a very bad time, and so was later on, and next week, and the rest of eternity. But Lorrie had started making this sad pouty face that apparently connected directly to my estrogen receptors, and I felt myself softening. “Yeah, I’m exhausted,” I admitted. “And I have to get the kids to camp and get to work. So . . .”
She kept sitting there, so I did something I knew I’d regret later and shared more information about my life than I wanted to. “Also, my good friend just suddenly passed away. We’re all reeling from it and could use some privacy.”
Her pouting shifted to a sincere look of sympathy. “Oh, Penelope. I’m so sorry.”
I was ready to forgive Lorrie her trespasses when she added, “As I’m sure you recall, my Mr. Pickles died last year. I’m still a real mess about it.”
Her cat?
She was comparing the natural demise of her elderly cat to the untimely death of my closest friend?
I stared at her, unable to think of a response—any response—that didn’t involve me coating her in catnip and stringing her up in the middle of the Humane Society.
“Lorrie? Mary and Joseph,” exclaimed Sanjay, who had just come down the stairs in a pair of boxers and the same dirty T-shirt. “I’m not decent.”
“Oops! It clearly is a bad time,” she said as she rose from the sofa.
He turned to me, not bothering to lower his voice as Lorrie skittered outside. “Whatever happened to the eye hook on the front door?”
“It’s still there. The kids unhooked it when they went out front to play.”
“We’re going to have to talk to them about stranger danger.”
“Lorrie’s not a stranger,” I said.
“I cannot think of anyone stranger than Lorrie.” His face grew serious. “You need to tell her to stop letting herself into our house.”
“I know,” I said.
I looked at Sanjay, who seemed awfully sprightly for what he usually referred to as an ungodly hour of the day. “Aren’t you exhausted?”