LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter 4: Rachel

      A DISTANT PART of me is so, so embarrassed that a total stranger has seen me faint. I’ve never fainted before. I mean, I’ve wanted to, a thousand times, usually when I’m at a party, trying to pretend that I’m having fun, and trying to eat when no one else is looking. I’m always worried about how I look when I’m eating. I think people who throw parties should offer private little carrels where guests can go and eat in private. So I generally don’t eat at parties, then the wine goes right to my head, like now, and that makes me feel even more self-conscious, because I’m afraid people will say, “That Rachel got so drunk at our party last night!” so in the end, I neither eat nor drink. I just stand around, hoping to faint, because leaving the party, even by ambulance, would be preferable to trying to look like I’m having a good time.

      But I suppose I really earned the faint today. And Jenny’s friend is very kind. He has sad eyes. Sad for me, because I’m an idiot.

      I guess I knew what the picture was. All morning long, I smothered the thought, watched as Adam read on his iPad and accepted gifts from the girls—a picture from Rose, drawn in nursery school, a tulip head from Charlotte, a rubber band from Grace. Charlotte was chattering, Grace sitting at his feet with a notepad and pen, pretending to write a book, all three girls content to bask in his half attention. Before, I never would’ve faulted him for that, those delayed responses and absentminded pats on the head. He works hard. He deserves time to relax.

      But this morning, I wondered what he was looking at. Who might be messaging him. And, as ever, his phone was on the table next to him. That’s nothing new. I wouldn’t let myself read into it. It was a tree sent by mistake. I didn’t look at the picture again.

      Instead, I went to the computer and looked up that hotel again. The soothing colors, chocolate and cream and white. The lobby bar, with its palm trees and beautiful clock. Looked at that for a long time after he took the kids to the museum, and though I had to go to my sister’s, all I did was sit there, looking at the penthouse suite, imagining how calm and confident I’d feel there, sipping that martini and looking out over the city.

      “Rachel. Drink some more water, honey.” My sister’s dark eyes are worried. I obey. I’m sitting on Jenny’s lovely, soft old couch, and my sister is teary-eyed and furious at the same time. Leo—that’s his name, Leo Killian, a nice Irish name—is looking at me too sympathetically. Tears are leaking out of my eyes, but they’re faraway tears, tears I’m not really even aware of, except Jenny keeps handing me tissues.

      Adam loves me. I know he loves me.

      To think I thought it was a tree. A knothole. Some kind of hole, yes, but really, I am such an idiot. Almost forty, and pathetically naive.

      I hope he’s not giving the girls macaroni and cheese for supper. Yes, it’s organic, but I like to save it for when I’ve had a really hard day. If he uses it, he preempts me. And you know what? He should never make macaroni and cheese from a box! I’m the one who gets to do that. I stay home with them all day, every day. I get to be lazy once in a while. He should make them chicken and broccoli and…and…

      Oh, God, he’s cheating.

      My thoughts surge and roll like a riptide, crashing into each other from all directions, then shushing back before I can figure out the current. I just… I just don’t know what to think or where to swim.

      Leo hands me a glass of wine. “Thank you,” I say.

      Is my life over? Life as I knew it?

      My heart starts thudding in hard, erratic beats. I love my life. Our life. Finally, we seemed to hit the sweet spot. Before, even though I liked my job and my coworkers and friends, I was waiting for my real life to begin. Marriage. Motherhood. Just as I was starting to worry that I’d never meet anyone, I met Adam. The courtship and marriage part was strangely easy. But then came four years trying to get pregnant. Hormone injections and trying desperately to keep our love life fun and spontaneous—and, please, there is no spontaneity when you’re trying to get pregnant, but I did my best to trick Adam into believing I was just incredibly horny and creative. Then thirty-three weeks of sheer terror, because when you’re pregnant with triplets, you’re a time bomb, and all you pray for is to make it to twenty-seven weeks, then another week more, and another week more.

      Those first few weeks, when Rose and Grace got to come home but Charlotte had to be in the hospital, and then with all three of them, at least one baby always awake, always hungry, always crying, always needing to be changed, the pain of my huge cesarean incision, my rock-hard, ever-leaking breasts… Even then, I loved it.

      But this past year, with the girls all sleeping through the night, eating regular food, and the no-dairy restriction lifted from Grace, and nobody having a peanut allergy, and Rose seeming to have outgrown the asthmatic bronchitis… I’ve loved every day of so many months, been so grateful for every day.

      Please don’t let these days be over. I don’t want things to change. Please, God, don’t let Adam be cheating.

      I guess I said that last thing out loud, because my sister squeezes my hand.

      “Maybe…” I begin. My voice sounds as thin and weak as rice paper. “Maybe whoever sent it just hit the wrong number?”

      “Sure,” Jenny says, but she’s stiff and tight next to me, so it’s clear what she thinks. I look at Leo.

      “Do you think it’s a wrong number?” I ask him. He’s a man. Maybe he’ll know.

      He hesitates, then runs a hand through his hair. “No.”

      “Why?”

      “Because if you were going to send a picture like that, wouldn’t you make sure it was going to the right person?”

      Yes. Except I would never send a picture like that.

      I gulp a mouthful of wine. My head is starting to pound.

      My husband might be having an affair.

      My husband is having an affair.

      The words don’t sink in.

      “So you’re a piano teacher?” I ask him.

      “That’s right.”

      The wine in my glass trembles, as if we’re having an earthquake. Oh, no, it’s because my hands are shaking. “Some of my friends use you. Elle Birkman? Her son is Hunter. And um, um…Claudia Parvost. Her daughter is Sophia.”

      “Sure. Nice people.”

      Elle and Claudia aren’t really my friends. We’re in the same book club. We all belong to the COH Lawn Club. The girls and I take Mommy and Me swim classes there. Elle just had breast implants and now wears a string bikini that makes the teenage-boy lifeguard extremely uncomfortable.

      Apparently, my brain will think about anything other than that…picture.

      “My girls… We want them to take an instrument. I always thought piano would be the nicest.”

      He smiles. It’s a sad smile, because he knows. “How old are they?”

      “Three and a half.”

      “Twins?”

      “Triplets.” I smile, but my smile is broken and weak, wobbly as a newly hatched baby bird.

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