The Perfect Marriage(19)

She wondered if that was true. How much of her anger at James was fueled by her own self-loathing? Then again, she hadn’t broken her marriage vows. James had. It wasn’t her fault. Neither was what had happened at Maeve Grant. She had done everything right—in both instances—only to be the one devastated by people with zero concern for honesty or integrity.

And yet, she was still the one seeing a shrink once a week. She was certain that neither James nor Jessica, nor even Lawrence Chittik or Sean Keener for that matter, had lost a moment’s sleep about what they’d done. Still, she couldn’t deny that she was in a downward spiral, with self-destruction seemingly at the top of her daily routine.

“How has your week been?” Dr. Rubenstein asked, once Haley had assumed her position on the sofa.

“Well, let’s see now,” she said. “Pretty uneventful. No job leads. Stayed inside. Drank a lot.” She paused. “And, oh yeah, I offered some guy sex in exchange for him accompanying me to James and Jessica’s anniversary party, and once I was there, I screamed profanity at them during the toasts in front of all their friends and family.” Another pause. “So, pretty much just a regular week in the life of Haley Sommers.”



Owen knew almost immediately something was wrong. During the subway ride home from the doctor’s office, his mother looked like she might faint at any moment, white as a ghost and holding on to the pole for dear life.

All of which made Owen sick to his stomach too. There are a limited number of options for what constitutes bad news when you’re visiting a pediatric oncologist, after all.

A few minutes after they returned home, his mother knocked on his door. He heard the knock through his headphones but didn’t turn around.

When his mother found him in this position, she sometimes shouted his name or touched him on the shoulder to get his attention. But other times, when the point wasn’t to engage him but to ascertain whether he was occupied, she’d quietly retreat from his bedroom, as if she wanted her entry to go unnoticed.

Which was why Owen’s most prized possession was not his computer, despite what his mother thought. It was his Beats noise-canceling headphones. He liked the way they enhanced the audio when he was playing Call of Duty, but what made them so dear to his heart was that whenever he wore them, his mother assumed that he was hearing impaired.

Which made them almost akin to an invisibility cloak. When he wore them with the sound off, they weren’t canceling outside speech but amplifying it.

This was apparently one of those times when his mother didn’t want to engage him. Her visit was to ascertain that he was busy. She did that when she wanted some privacy of her own.

After retreating from his room, his mother entered her own bedroom, and the door shut behind her. He gave her a few minutes to settle into whatever she was doing, then left his bedroom to do some eavesdropping.

He pressed his ear against her closed door. At first, he couldn’t hear words. Only sobs.

When the words came, they were halting.

“I know. I know. I’m trying. It’s just . . . I thought this was all over.” More crying. “Yeah . . . I know. They said that there’s some experimental treatment . . . No. Not covered by insurance . . . ‘Low– to mid–six figures,’ is what the doctor said . . . I’m not sure. I think we should wait until they confirm it. So next week, I guess . . . I don’t know . . .”

Owen had heard enough. He went back into his room, shut the door behind him, and put the headphones back on, turning the volume up high.

But instead of losing itself in his game, his mind ran through what his mother’s side of the conversation meant. The cancer had returned. That was obvious, and he had surmised as much by his mother’s behavior on the subway. While they were poking him with needles, someone must have told her about the recurrence.

The other part was about money. Owen didn’t know how much the chemo had cost the first time around, but his parents were always going on about drugs that cost $100 a pill, and he’d taken seven of them a day. He remembered his father saying that getting treated for acute myeloid leukemia was more expensive than four years at Harvard.

If it weren’t for health insurance, Owen knew he would have died that first year. And from what he could piece together from his mother’s call, insurance wasn’t going to help this time around.

His father was always going on about how the important things in life couldn’t be bought. But like so many things his old man said, it was wrong. The most important things always came with a price tag.



Wayne’s lunch break was between noon and 12:50 p.m. One of the perks of his seniority was that he got to eat at a normal time. The newbies found themselves having lunch as early as 10:30 a.m. or as late as 2:00 p.m.

The faculty lounge was a windowless space, furnished with the same type of Formica picnic tables that the students used. But whereas the main cafeteria must have had thirty tables lined up in rows, the teachers had two, side by side. As the joke went: one for the cool teachers and one for the losers, although which was which was also a point of dispute.

Wayne was about to tear open the cellophane surrounding the turkey and cheese sandwich he’d packed for himself five hours earlier when his phone rang. The caller ID identified his ex-wife.

Jessica had never called him at school, not even when they were married. That she was calling now meant two things. First, it was about Owen. And second, it was important.