Lucy by the Sea (13)

“You’re absolutely sure,” William said, and I could hear Becka say, “I’m sure.”

“All right, then,” William said, “we’re going to work on a way to get you out of New York. I don’t know how, but we will. Hang in there, kid.”

He handed the phone back to me, and Becka started to cry again. “Mom, I’m so humiliated, Mom, I didn’t even know, Mom, I hate him so much, oh Mommy….” And I listened and I said, I know, I know. I took the phone and went back outside with it, and I walked back and forth as my poor child sobbed.



—

When I came back inside the house William was on his phone; he was sitting at the dining room table. “Well, Trey,” he said, looking up at me, raising his eyebrows, “what was your plan? How long were you thinking of continuing to deceive Becka?”

He put the phone on the table and put it on speaker and I could hear Trey, who sounded frightened, saying, “I don’t have any answers for that, Will.” After a moment Trey added, “I understand you’re concerned for her, and so am I. But I think you should let us be the ones to work this out.”

“Is that right,” said William. “You think you should be left alone in an apartment with my daughter during a raging pandemic while you text love notes to some other woman?”

I heard my son-in-law’s voice; he became angry, and he said to William, “You did the same thing to your wife, from what Becka has told me. I don’t think you should be throwing stones in a glass house.”

William looked at me, his eyes widening. He leaned over the phone; I could see him hesitate, I could see his rage rush up, and he said, “Yeah. I did, Trey. And you know why I did? Because I was an asshole! That’s why I did it, you fucking numbnuts.” He sat back, then sat forward again. “Welcome to the asshole club. Asshole.” And our son-in-law hung up.



—

I remembered something then: When I had found out about William’s affairs, I had gone onto the roof of our building too one day to cry; the girls must have been home, or maybe I didn’t want the neighbors to hear me. But I went up on the roof and I cried and cried, and I remember saying out loud, “Mom, oh Mommy!” This was before I had made up the mother who is always nice to me, and so it was my real mother that I was calling out to that day. Crying for my mother—it was so primal, and that’s what Becka’s cries were to me.

That I could not be with her to hold her to me was anguish.

I felt almost out of my head with distress, is what I mean.

But William said, “She’s going to be okay, you know.” And that was hard for me, and I said, “Well, she isn’t okay right now!” And he stood up and said, “Take the long view, Lucy. You never liked him. She’s rid of him. She’s a great kid, she really is. Now she can find someone else.” He opened his hand and added, “Or not. Not everyone has to be married, you know.” Then he said, “She married him on the rebound, don’t forget.” And of course this thought had gone through my head: Becka had been seeing a young man she loved deeply and he had broken up with her, and then she had very quickly met Trey. But I could not stop the feeling that I had been gutted. That Becka had been gutted.



—

William did not talk much during this time. But once he stopped as he walked across the living room and he said, “That fucking numbnuts is a poet? And all he could come up with is a cliché about throwing stones in glass houses? Jesus!”

I thought William made a good point. But I did not say so.



—

Two days went by. Becka phoned me a few times each day and wept and was angry—furious—and I could hear at one point Trey shouting to her sarcastically, “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!” And I hated him then with all my heart. I could almost not stand it, I felt a violence toward him. I felt I could have hit him again and again if I was in his presence. It has always been frightening for me when I feel that rage toward someone. I had felt it toward a few of the women that William had had affairs with years ago. One woman, I had pictured hitting her face repeatedly. And it scared me, because of the violence I had had done to me by my mother when I was a child.



—

Chrissy’s husband, Michael, called William and said he would be willing to drive into Brooklyn and get Becka; she could stay in the guesthouse on his parents’ property for two weeks of self-quarantine, and when William told me that Michael had called and suggested that—let me only say that I loved him fully, I loved him as much as I hated Trey. It was unbelievable to me that he would offer this, I will never forget it.



—

But William said no.

William said that he was not going to endanger three people. I was aghast.

William looked at me and said indignantly, “You think I’m not getting her out of there? I’m getting her out the safest way possible, Lucy!” He added, “Michael has asthma, Lucy. Have you forgotten that?”



—

So William made a phone call to the driver he had used for years, the fellow who would take him to the airport and pick him up whenever William went anywhere, to a conference or wherever it was that William had gone in the past. “Horik?” he said, and he took the phone out onto the porch. As he returned, he was still talking into the phone and he said, “Lysol spray, all over the car. Every crack of that car. Okay, thank you.”