The Other Mrs.(24)

Imogen’s door is open a smidge. I peek in, but she’s not there.

I head to Will’s and my bedroom. There I stare at my tired reflection in the floor-length mirror, the weary eyes, the poplin shirt, the skirt. My makeup has nearly worn away. My skin is washed out, more gray than anything else, or maybe it’s just the lighting. Crow’s-feet sneak from the edges of my eyes. My laugh lines become more prominent each day. The joys of aging.

I’m pleased to see my hair starting to grow back to its usual length after an impulsive chop, one of those regrettable haircuts I hated. All I’d ever gotten were the dead ends trimmed. But then one day my longtime stylist went and sheared off four inches or more. I stared at her aghast when she was through, eyeing the clumps of hair on her salon floor.

What? she’d asked, as wide-eyed as me. That’s what you said you wanted, Sadie.

I told her it was fine. It’s hair. It grows back.

I didn’t want her to feel bad for what she’d done. And it is only hair. It does grow back.

But if we hadn’t moved when we did, I would have been on the hunt for a new stylist.

I yank the high heels from my feet and stare at the blisters on my skin. I step from my skirt, tossing it into the laundry basket. After sinking my feet into a pair of warm socks, my legs into a pair of comfy pajama pants, I head back downstairs, checking the thermostat on the way down. This old home is either icy cold or burning hot, but never anything in between. The furnace can no longer distribute heat properly. I turn the heat up a notch.

Will is still in the kitchen when I arrive, putting away the rest of the dinner prep. He slips the flour and cornstarch in a cabinet, sets the dirty skillet in the sink.

He calls the boys for dinner. Moments later, we sit at the kitchen table to eat. Will has served the pork chops with a side of spinach couscous tonight, his culinary skills easily trumping mine.

“Where’s Imogen?” I ask, and Will tells me she’s with a friend, studying for a Spanish quiz. She’ll be home by seven. I roll my eyes, mutter, “Don’t hold your breath.” Because Imogen rarely, if ever, does as she says. Only sometimes does she eat dinner with us. When she does, she saunters into the kitchen five minutes later than the rest of us because she can. Because we’re not going to nag her about it. She knows that if she wants to eat the dinner Will’s made, she eats with us, or she doesn’t eat at all. Though still, when she does eat with us, she comes late and leaves early to exercise her autonomy.

Tonight, however, she’s a no-show, and I wonder if she’s really studying with a friend, or if she’s doing something else, like hanging out at the abandoned military fortification at the far end of the island where kids have been rumored to drink, do drugs, have sex.

I put it out of my mind for now. Instead I ask Otto about his day. He shrugs and says, “Okay, I guess.”

Will asks, “How was the science test?” inquiring about things like static and kinetic friction, and asking him, “Did you remember what they mean?”

Otto says he did, he thinks. Will reaches over, ruffles his hair and says, “Atta boy. The studying helped.” I watch as a dark thatch of hair falls into Otto’s eyes. His hair has grown too long so that it’s shaggy and unkempt. It hides his eyes. Otto’s eyes are hazel like Will’s, and can turn on a dime from a warm brown to a sky blue, though I can’t see which tonight.

Dinner conversation consists mostly of Tate’s day at school, though half the class was apparently absent because half of the parents have the good sense not to send their children to school when there is a murderer on the loose. Though Tate doesn’t know this.

I watch as Otto, across from me, slices through the pork chop with a steak knife. There’s a crudeness about the way he holds the knife, about the way he cuts his meat with it. The pork is succulent. It’s cooked to perfection; my own knife slices right through. But still, Otto goes after his full tilt, as if it’s overcooked, tough and rubbery, nearly impossible to get through with the serrated knife edge, which it’s not.

There’s something about the knife in his hand that makes me lose my appetite.

“Aren’t you hungry?” Will asks, seeing that I’m not eating. I don’t answer his question. I reach for my fork instead. I set a bite of pork in my mouth. The memories come rushing back to me, and I find that I can hardly chew.

But still I do chew because Will is watching me, as is Tate. Tate, who doesn’t like pork chops, though we have a three-bite rule in our home. Three bites and then you can be through. He’s only had one.

But Otto, on the other hand, eats voraciously, sawing through the meat like a lumberjack with a log.

I’d never thought much about knives before. They were just part of the flatware. Not until the day Will and I walked into the principal’s office at Otto’s public high school in Chicago and there he sat in a chair, back to us, handcuffs on his wrists. It was alarming to see, my son with his hands bound behind him like a common criminal. Will had received a call from the principal that there was a problem at school, something we needed to discuss. I cut short my shift in the ER. As I drove to the school alone with plans to meet Will there, my mind went to a failing grade, or the overlooked signs of a learning disability we didn’t yet know about. Perhaps Otto was dyslexic. The idea of Otto struggling with something, with anything, saddened me. I wanted to help.