The Other Mrs.(28)

Will and Otto spread out at the kitchen table to work on homework. Tate turns on the living room TV and settles in, snuggled up under an afghan, to watch a cartoon.

I carry my glass of wine upstairs. A long soak in a warm bath is what I have in mind. But at the top of the steps, I find myself drawn not to the master bathroom, but instead to Imogen’s room.

It’s dark when I enter. I press my palm against the door, opening it wide. I ignore a sign on the door that tells me to keep out. I let myself into the room, feeling the wall for a light switch and turning it on. The room becomes visible and I discover a jumble of dark clothing strewn across the floor, enough of it that I have to move it to avoid stepping on it.

The room smells of incense. The box of sticks lies there on Imogen’s desk beside a coiled snake–shaped holder. The sticks go inside the snake’s mouth, the smell still potent enough that I wonder if she was here, after school, burning incense in her room before she disappeared to wherever she is. The desk is wooden and old. Imogen has carved words into the wood with the sharp edge of some sort of blade. They’re not nice words. Indeed, they’re angry words. Fuck you. I hate u.

I take a swig of my wine before setting the glass on the desktop. I trace my finger across the wooden trenches, wondering if this is the same handwriting that was left on my car window. I wish, in retrospect, that I had thought to take a photo of my car window before blasting that word away with the defrost. Then I could compare the handwriting, see if the shape of the letters is the same. Then I’d know.

This is the first time I’ve stepped all the way inside Imogen’s room. I didn’t come with the intent of snooping. But this is my family’s home now. It feels within my right to snoop. Will wouldn’t like it. I just barely make out his and Otto’s muffled voices coming from the kitchen. They have no idea where I am.

I look inside the desk drawers first. It’s just what you’d expect to find in a desk drawer. Pens, paper, paper clips. I stand on the desk chair, running my hands blindly along the bookshelf above the desk, coming up with only a palmful of dust. I ease myself back down to the floor.

I leave my wine where it is. I go to the bedside table, pull on the drawer knob. I sift through random things. A child’s rosary, wadded up tissues, a bookmark. A condom. I reach for the condom, hold it in my hand a moment, debate whether to tell Will. Imogen is sixteen. Sixteen-year-olds, these days, have sex. But a condom at least tells me Imogen is being smart about the choices she makes. She’s being safe. I can’t fault her for that. If we were on better terms I’d have a conversation with her, woman to woman. But we’re not. Regardless, an appointment with a gynecologist isn’t out of the question now that she’s of a certain age. That might be a better way to handle things.

I put the condom back. Then I find a photograph.

It’s a photograph of a man, I can tell, from the body shape and what’s left of the hair, that which hasn’t been scuffed off in apparent anger. But the man’s face, on the other hand, has been obliterated like a scratch-off lottery ticket, scored with the edge of a coin. I wonder who the man is. I wonder how Imogen knows him, and what made Imogen so angry that she felt the need to do this.

I drop to my hands and knees beside the bed. I look beneath, before foraging in the pockets of the misplaced clothing. I rise to my feet and go to the closet, sliding the door open. I reach in, feeling blindly for the light string and giving it a pull.

I don’t want Will to know I’m nosing around in Imogen’s room. I hold my breath, listen for noises coming from downstairs, but all that I hear is Tate’s cartoon on the TV, the sound of his innocent laugh. If only he’d stay this age forever. Will and Otto are quiet and I envision them folded over notebooks on the kitchen table, lost in thought.

Not so long after what happened with Otto, I read an article about how to best snoop in your teen’s room, the places to look. Not the obvious spots like desk drawers, but instead: secret pockets in the lining of coats; inside the electrical sockets; in false-bottomed soda cans. What we were to look for wasn’t so obvious either, but rather cleaning supplies, plastic bags, over-the-counter medicine—all of which were easily misused by teens. I never actually snooped through Otto’s room. I didn’t need to. What happened with him was one and done. Otto had learned his lesson. We talked about it. It would never happen again.

But Imogen is a closed book to me. She hardly speaks, not more than a sentence at best, and even that is never forthcoming. I know nothing about her, about who she’s having sex with (and does she have sex here, in this room, when Will and I are gone, or does she sneak out the bedroom window at night?), about those girls she smokes cigarettes with, about what she does in these missing hours that she’s not with us. Will and I should have a better handle on these things. We shouldn’t be so uninformed. It’s irresponsible that we are, but every time I’ve broached the subject with Will—who is Imogen really?—he puts me off, saying that we can’t push too hard. That she’ll open up to us when she’s ready.

I can’t wait anymore.

I search the closet. I find the letter in the pocket of a charcoal sweatshirt. It really isn’t hard to find. I check the shoeboxes first, the back corners of the closet where only dust resides. And then on to the clothing. It’s on the fourth or fifth try that my hand folds around something and I pull it out of a pocket to see. It’s paper, folded many, many times so that it’s small, no more than an inch tall by an inch wide, and thick.