Lucy by the Sea (Amgash, #4)(13)

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That night when I went into my room to sleep I found a sleep mask on the pillow. “William,” I called out, “what is this?”

He yelled in from the room next to mine. “You’re always complaining about the skylight. And the sun rises earlier these days. I picked that up for you at the drugstore that day and then I forgot about it—”

I went and stood in his doorway. “Well, thank you,” I said. And he just waved a hand, his knees were up beneath the covers and he was reading. “Night, Lucy,” he said.



* * *





I need to say: Even as all of this went on, even with the knowledge that my doctor had said it would be a year, I still did not…I don’t know how to say it, but my mind was having trouble taking things in. It was as though each day was like a huge stretch of ice I had to walk over. And in the ice were small trees stuck there and twigs, this is the only way I can describe it, as though the world had become a different landscape and I had to make it through each day without knowing when it would stop, and it seemed it would not stop, and so I felt a great uneasiness. Often I woke in the night and would lie there perfectly still; I would take off my sleep mask and not move; it seemed hours I would lie there, but I do not know. As I lay there, different parts of my life would come to me.

I thought how when William and I first met—he was the teaching assistant in my biology class my sophomore year at college—I thought how, because of the tremendous isolation of my background, I had known nothing at all about popular culture, and I had known nothing, for instance, about the Marx Brothers, but when William would hold me, I would say, “Closer, closer,” and he told me the Groucho Marx line where Groucho tells a woman who is saying that to him, “If I get any closer I’ll be behind you.”

Then the skylight would begin to lighten and I would put my sleep mask back on and fall back to sleep.





v


And then—oh God, poor Becka!



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—

As I came through the door after my morning walk, this was toward the end of April, my telephone rang; it was Becka, and she was screaming, crying, “Mom! Mom! Oh Mommy!” She was crying so hard it was difficult for me to hear her, but the gist of it was this: Her husband, Trey, was having an affair, he had been planning on leaving Becka, he told her, but now they were stuck in lockdown. Becka had found texts on his phone.

I can almost not record this, it was so painful. Becka had gone up to the roof of their building in order to call me. In the background were the sounds of sirens, one after another.

“I’m going to give you to Dad,” I said, and I did, and William spoke to her with precision. He asked her certain things: how long had it been going on, where had Trey thought he was going to live, was the other person married. He asked her things I never would have thought to ask her. And I could hear her voice getting calmer as she spoke to him. He asked her if she wanted to stay with Trey, and I could hear her say, “No.”

“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.



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—

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.