Other People's Houses(39)

The device stopped ringing, but then almost immediately started again. Charlie was shocked, but his decency remained. “Will you answer it, or shall I? Maybe I should. Both of us just got fucked over by the same woman.”

Anne said nothing. She had nothing to say, no appropriate vocabulary for the end of the world. This wasn’t supposed to happen, it was supposed to be over now, it wasn’t going to harm her children, she had fixed it. And yet the jarring sound of an old car horn was filling the room. The kids always fucked with the ringtones; they found it hilarious. Suddenly her husband hit speaker and answered.

“Richard?” he said.

There was a pause. “Hello?” Anne felt faint at the sound of her lover’s voice in her kitchen, just like the other day when Frances had signaled the beginning of the end, the first tear in the veil. She looked at her husband, but he was looking at the iPad, a bewildered smile of confusion and shock on his face, struggling to make sense of what the fuck had just happened to his life. It wasn’t even 9:00 a.m. yet. He had been sitting on the toilet swiping through the headlines when the conversation had popped up on his screen, presenting him with a newsflash he hadn’t expected. He was reeling, but he was pulling it together.

“This is Charlie, Anne’s husband. I’m afraid I just discovered what was going on at the exact moment my wife was trying to break up with you.”

“I was breaking up with him,” Anne said.

Charlie ignored her. “We should have a drink or something to celebrate the incredible weirdness of this moment.”

Richard sounded like he was crying. “I’m sorry. I’m in love with your wife.”

Charlie snorted. “So am I. Doesn’t seem like she’s interested in either of us, though, does it?” He was looking at her, his eyes cool. “She can be remarkably unfeeling, you know. Once she’s done with someone she’s really done, I’m afraid. If I were you I’d cut your losses and find someone nicer. Are you young? You sound young.”

“I’m twenty-seven.”

Charlie looked at his wife, who had started to tremble. “Robbing the cradle, Anne? You should be ashamed of yourself. I know I am.” He was pulling on the well-cut jacket of his courtroom persona; Anne had seen it before. In this mode he could handle anything and she was suddenly afraid. “Well, Richard, sadly for you I’m not going to divorce my wife because she owes my kids another decade of service even if I never want to lay a hand on her again.”

“I love her . . .” Richard dissolved into tears, and Anne suddenly hated him for his weakness, despised the person she’d welcomed into her body over and over again. She gazed at her husband, recognizing him as the strong, capable, fully adult man he was, about five minutes and six months too late. He was still speaking to the iPad, holding it up in front of him like a book.

“Well, that’s unfortunate, Richard, you have my sympathy. However, I want to make something clear, OK? I’m going to block your number, and if you call my house or come anywhere near it I’m going to beat seven shades of living shit out of you. Do you understand me? I’m about to throw Anne out of the house, so please feel free to slobber over the ice queen somewhere else, but come near me or my children and I will literally break your arm.”

“Anne?” Richard said. “Are you there?”

Charlie waited, but his wife said nothing. “Nope, Richard, she’s gone. Good luck to you, and I sincerely hope one day your beloved wife and the mother of your children fucks around on you so you can enjoy the sensation of having your balls fed into a meat grinder the way I am now.” And he hung up, took ten seconds to block the number, and then smashed the iPad on the corner of the counter repeatedly, until it was just shards on the floor. Then he looked at Anne, his mouth curved into a ghost of the smile she’d seen on it every day of their life together, and told her to get the fuck out of his house.





Eighteen.


Frances was heading home when the phone rang. It was Iris.

“Oh my God,” she said, sounding half horrified, half giggly. “Are you sitting down?”

“Yes,” said Frances. “Because I’m driving, and it’s not a chariot. Is something wrong?”

Iris took a breath. “Yes, but not for us. I just walked out to go to the store and found Charlie and Anne Porter having a knock-down, drag-out fight in the street. She was demanding he let her back into the house so she could get some clothes, and he was refusing to let her in saying she had rescinded her membership in his family and should ask her boyfriend to loan her his hipster flannel.” She laughed. “Honestly, he was hilarious and cold and terrifying, and she was a total wreck.” She paused. “I realize I shouldn’t laugh, and I honestly don’t think it’s funny, but what the fuck?”

Frances felt swoony, and looked briefly in the driver’s mirror before pulling across two lanes to take a shorter route home. “Did you just stand there and watch?”

“No! I backed slowly into the house and then took up a position by the window, ready to get involved if it got physical. But honestly, every time she got closer to him he’d step back. It was remarkably effective body language. Sara would have loved it.”

Frances asked, “Is she still out there?”

“Sara?”

“No, Anne.”