Catherine McKenzie - Hidden

“No. I…I have to make sure…I have to…”

“Make sure of what?”

“That she believes me. That she doesn’t leave here thinking that Jeff and I, that…”

“Because you didn’t?”

I close my eyes. I think of my promise.

“We didn’t. We couldn’t.”

“Don’t lie to me, Tish.”

“I’m not.”

“So tell her that.”

“I can’t do that. Would you want to hear that?”

Will wails in the background. The phone scrapes against Julia’s ear and I can hear her shushing him.

“Hear that my husband almost cheated on me, that he might’ve been in love with another woman, but he decided to do the honorable thing and stick by me?”

“It sounds so awful when you say it like that.”

“Is there any way to say it that doesn’t make it awful?”

“But it wasn’t like that. That’s not why—”

“For Christ’s sake, Tish. What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know, okay? I just…need someone on my side, right now.”

She sighs. “I’m on your side. Barely, but I am.”

I pace the floor waiting for Brian to get home, trying to formulate a plan, figure out what to do. Sometimes less is more, I remember an English teacher saying in college, in a creative writing class. But this isn’t fiction. This is my life. And I’m pretty sure that more is required. More is necessary. Less isn’t going to get the job done.

And though I want to be a coward, crawl away, wait to see what the outcome might be, I can’t. Claire has enough to live with. She doesn’t need me too.

Brian finally gets home looking tired and sad, and smelling like the disinfectant that’s supposed to wash the death away but never quite does. After an hour of worrying, I have my plan ready. Julia’s not doing so well, I tell him. She’s not sleeping and Will has croup and her husband isn’t being any kind of help. I said I’d go over there, if I could. Watch Will for a few hours so she can get some sleep, keep her sanity.

Of course, Brian says. Zoey’s sleeping. He needs to sleep too. They’ll be fine without me.

I hold him close, tell him how sorry I am that things didn’t go better, that the climbers didn’t make it. I want to take the death away, but I can’t do that tonight. It will take weeks before he forgives himself, before he really believes that he did all that he could, that no one could do more.

I will give him those weeks. I will.

But first I have to do one last thing for Jeff.

This time, Claire’s the one who’s surprised when her door swings open, revealing not the room service she must’ve ordered but me.

She’s wearing one of those white terry-cloth hotel robes, and her hair is damp. The room’s nondescript, and a small red suitcase sits on the edge of her bed, a few clothes spilling out of it.

“What are you doing here?” she asks. “How did you even find me?”

“Small town. I called every hotel in the book until I found you.”

It didn’t take that long. Third time was the charm.

Her bloodshot eyes barely meet mine. “What do you want?”

“Can I come in?”

Maybe she wants to say no, slam the door in my face, but the curiosity I was counting on, the lingering doubt, makes her step back, leaving me enough space to enter the sad little room and sit down in the red fabric chair wedged into the corner.

She sits on the edge of the bed, the farthest away she can get from me in this miserable space.

She holds the top of the robe closed. “I thought we were done.”

“I’m sorry I pushed you out of my house like that. I know how it must look.”

“Really?”

“I think so. I’ve been trying to understand things from your perspective since you left. To see why you might think—”

“That you and Jeff were having an affair?”

I try not to flinch. “But we weren’t. We really weren’t.”

“How can I believe that? Of course you’re not going to admit it.”

“I’ve been thinking about that. Why would you believe me? Would I believe you if the tables were reversed?”

“Would you?”

“I don’t know. I’d want to, though. I’d like to think I know my husband well enough that whatever I found out, there’d be some reasonable explanation. I’ve been racking my brain, trying to think of a way to convince you, but proving a negative, that’s a hard thing to do. Then I thought, maybe that’s the explanation.”

“I don’t follow.”

“What I meant was, if it was true, wouldn’t it be obvious? Wouldn’t there be lots of signs and clues? More than a few tiny connections that I have with lots of people, that we all do?”

“Like?”

“Like…the book, for instance. Fifty people have that book, all with the same inscription. And the texts, they were about work.”

“That’s easy for you to say. I can’t read them.”

I let my face go slack, then register surprise. I’ve just thought of something.

“But you can. I have them here.”

I pull out my phone and scroll down past the barrage of texts from Zoey and Brian, till I get to the text I sent to Jeff on Saturday.

“Here,” I say, holding it out to her.

She takes the phone and reads the words I reread earlier tonight: How’d it go? There’s no answer from Jeff. Of course, there can’t be.

“If you scroll up, you can see the earlier texts you were asking about.”

These are trickier, but I’m counting on the fact that if I treat them as innocent, she’ll see them that way too.

Jeff to me, 10:53 a.m.: Where are you?

Me, a moment later: Where are *you*?

Where I said I’d be.

Then, an hour later, me to Jeff: John Scott is here. Help!

Jeff’s instant reply: I’ll be right there.

“Do you know John Scott?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says.

“Is it just me or is he a total jerk?”

She keeps her head bowed over my phone for a long moment of silence. Then she looks up at me and hands me back my phone.

“He is. Is there anything else?”

“No.” I stand. “Only that I’m so terribly sorry if I’ve done anything to make you feel this way. There wasn’t anything between us.”

He chose you. Please believe me.

He chose you.

I don’t know her, so I can’t tell if she’s buying this. But what I want to believe, what I want to see, is that she’s hoping I’m telling the truth. That what I’ve said, what she’s read, clears away the questions, eases the pain of surprise, of hurt, of doubt.

What I want to see is a coin flying up, flipping over, and coming down on the side that will convince her of Jeff’s innocence.

That she’s content with that.

That she won’t try her luck again.

Or mine.

When I got home from the golf weekend with Tish, it felt like I’d been away for longer than two days. It felt like I used to feel when I got home from summer camp, or college, the feeling that I’d missed the changing of the season, or something else that happens by inches when it’s right in front of you.

It was a feeling that was hard to get rid of, that I tried to ignore, though I knew I couldn’t or shouldn’t.

But I tried.

I buried myself in work, barely looking up from the moment I sat at my desk.

I made an extra effort to do things with Seth at night and on the weekends. I helped him with his homework. I bought him a new set of golf clubs, the clubs that would see him through till he was fully grown, and we made plans for the summer, discussed the rounds we’d play when school let out.

I made some time for Claire too. We cooked meals together, me acting as sous chef, chopping, tasting, and cleaning up when we were done. I got a sitter for Friday night so we could go to a movie she’d been eager to see for months. Afterward, we made love slowly, quietly, after we’d taken the sitter home and made sure that Seth was actually asleep instead of just pretending.

A weekend full of mending fences, literally—a whole section at the back of our lot was rotting into the ground. It wasn’t my sort of thing, I wasn’t any good at it, but I drove those fence posts home. I hammered the cross sections into place, so they were there, slightly off plumb, for all to see if anyone was looking, even though I knew I was the only one who was.

I was here. I was staying.

I kept myself busy so my mind wouldn’t stray, so it would stay faithful.

I tried, but I couldn’t do it.

A week after we got home, I got an email from Tish at 11:04 a.m.

I was sitting at my desk, my muscles aching from the unfamiliar effort I’d put in with the fence posts over the weekend, my mind aching too.

I know the exact time I received the email because I’d been watching the clock on my computer tick over every minute since I sat down at my desk, an email to her open but unstarted.

This was not the first communication we’d had since we said good-bye in L.A.—we’d kept up a light flow of banter since then—when we’d given each other a brief hug at the airport, when we’d wanted to hold on tightly. But I knew from the first and only word that this email was different, that somehow, in the symbiosis that was us on our good days, we were finally going to have the conversation we should’ve had, maybe a long time ago.

So…is all she wrote.

So, I answered back.

We have a problem, yes?

Houston, we have a problem.

Don’t joke. Not now.

Sorry, I wrote.

It’s okay. What are you thinking?

Honestly?

Of course. Always.

I paused, trying to think of what to write. Trying to put together the words I’d been puzzling out since I’d come home.

But there wasn’t any way I was ever going to get this right.

2 + 2 = 4, I typed eventually with cold fingers and the blood rushing in my ears. We learn this as kids, we teach this to our kids, and unlike so many other things we’re told and we tell others, it’s always true. So maybe that’s why I’ve been trying to add all of this up. But the thing is, the awful thing is, whatever I do, it doesn’t. No matter how I work it, no matter what formula I use, nothing works. Because what I can’t take out of the equation are Claire and Seth, but—and this is harder to say than you could possibly know—if I take you out of the equation, it works. It adds up. At least, I think it does. I’ll never know unless I do it, as much as I don’t want to. Does any of this make sense? Can you possibly not hate me right now?

I hit Send before I had time to stop myself. Then I sat staring at the screen, wondering what I had done.

I had to wait a long time for a response. Several hours. Hours with my door shut, my fingers pressed against my eyelids, trying to blot out the worst headache I’d ever had.

Then, finally:

Will you believe me if I say that your email is one I’ve known has been coming since the beginning? she wrote. It’s one I’ve known I should be writing. It’s one I’ve written a million times in my head. For all the reasons you’ve said. For all the reasons we talked about. Of course I understand. Of course I agree. Of course you’re right. Only, one thing, okay? I need a soft landing before we rip the Band-Aid off.

I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach, but what other outcome was I hoping for? That she’d beg me to reconsider? That she’d have the missing piece to the formula I couldn’t figure out?

Soft landing? I wrote back. Band-Aid?

Haven’t you ever done that with Seth? When he’s been hurt but then he’s healed, and there’s only the Band-Aid as evidence? So you say, I’m going to rip it off quickly at three, because doing it slowly is worse in the end. I’m thinking that if we do it on a count we agree on, it will hurt like hell for a moment, but not as much as a slow peel.

Okay, I get that, but not the soft landing part.

What I meant is that I need some time to heal before I get injured again.

How much time?

A long pause, then: April 30.

A month away.

Why that date?

I don’t know. Jesus. It’s not like there’s a rule book here.