Eliza Starts a Rumor(66)
“It has nothing to do with you,” and “I hate to tell you this, but I doubt this is the first time he’s cheated.”
It had never entered her mind that this wasn’t his only affair, that it was possible he had been unfaithful before. It was so hard to believe, until suddenly it wasn’t.
Olivia thought back to an incident that happened before they were married, a drunken night with his frat brothers when they talked rather disgustingly of passing around a girl they referred to as “Motel Michele” during their last year of college.
“Spencer checked in first,” one of them joked. “And last,” another chimed in.
She saw Spencer shoot the guy a look, “a shut the hell up” kind of look. She asked him about it later. He insisted, “I shot him a look because it wasn’t true. I would never cheat on you, baby.”
She chose not to question him further. The invitations for their wedding were already in the mail. She reprimanded herself for it now and swore never to stick her head in the sand again. She was so angry about this ruse of a life. She thought about the fool she was, and all of those friends of his, knowing what a shit he was on one hand while toasting their wedding vows with the other. Their girlfriends probably knew as well; the Becks did for sure. She’d counted them as her friends, too.
Lily reached up to her with her dimpled little hands, batting her lilac eyes. Olivia was so in love with this baby girl. She hoped it would dissipate the bitterness. You have your beautiful baby. You have your integrity. You have your whole life ahead of you. She begged herself to think better, not bitter. It was all so brutal.
Olivia began her investigation of Spencer’s affair by checking her past Open Table reservations to see when they had had their forced double date at the little Greek restaurant on Madison Avenue. She would forever think of that place as an integral scene in her Greek tragedy, as opposed to how she’d thought of it before—the place with the yummy lamb meatballs and spicy grilled octopus. Open Table had the reservation listed at one month before her due date; but clearly, at that point, Spencer and Ashley were quite familiar with each other. She jumped forward in her mind to the day that Lily was born, the night really, as she came into the world a little before three o’clock in the morning. Was there any sign that it was going on then?
She desperately wanted to think not, as she ran the evening over in her head. Spencer was present and focused throughout the entire birth experience, from what she could recall. She wasn’t exactly focusing on him.
Then she remembered: She remembered the one odd thing that occurred at the hospital, and as she did, tears stung her eyes.
She had drifted to sleep soon after they arrived in her room, and Spencer had kissed her atop her head and said, “Get some sleep. I’m going to get some air, pick us up some bagels and good coffee.”
About an hour or so later the nurse wheeled Lily’s little bassinet into the room. They had teased her thick patch of jet-black hair into a mock pompadour. Olivia laughed thinking about the fun the nurses must’ve had with Lily’s unusually abundant newborn locks. She had gingerly propped herself up to greet her baby.
“She looks like Elvis!” Olivia had exclaimed.
The nurse laughed as she placed Lily in Olivia’s arms. “That’s exactly what your sister-in-law said!”
“My sister-in-law is on a business trip in China,” Olivia replied, not thinking much about it.
“I must be confused,” the nurse answered, adding, “I haven’t slept much.”
In retrospect, thought Olivia, the nurse wasn’t confused. Spencer had brought that woman to see her baby and passed her off as his sister. In fact, she had seen her baby before her own family did. He couldn’t be that cruel, could he? But then she remembered that he had bought a house and moved them out of the city to be near his mistress.
She took a break from thinking, crawled back into her bed, and cried. The rain crashing against the windows could barely drown out her sobs. I can’t do this for a second more, she thought. I’ll manage without the money.
She logged on to the Hudson Valley Ladies’ Bulletin Board and wrote a post. She didn’t think about it, didn’t weigh one word over another; she just wrote. She closed her laptop, crawled back under the covers, and went back to sleep.
CHAPTER 37
Eliza & Olivia & Alison & Amanda
Eliza woke up with what felt like a hangover, except that she didn’t drink. She wanted to go out to her desk and spy for Olivia, wanted to turn on her computer and approve posts for the bulletin board, but today the thought of getting out from under the covers made her anxious. I’m getting worse, she thought. It frightened her. The longer she stayed inside, the scarier the outside world became. She was dressed in layers upon layers of clothing, a pair of underwear and a sports bra under her flannel pajamas. On top of it a long cardigan sweater covered the dried-up blood that she hadn’t bothered to wash off of her arm where she had deliberately cut it the night before. The weather report quoted unusually high temperatures for this time of year. Even the rain didn’t cool it down.
Luke was beginning to notice that her behavior was, at the very least, strange. The previous night, upon seeing her layers, he’d asked her, “Are you feeling OK, honey?”
“I’m fine,” she’d answered blankly.