Why would she? Lisa wanted to laugh. She was probably at her fancy PR firm tweaking some press release. PR was a perfect job for Gwen, she was so obsessed with her image. Lisa could tell by looking around the curated house, with its oatmeal-and-cream palette, that Anton was the one thing that just didn’t fit. He must have felt it, too. His slovenliness was an act of rebellion.
Lisa took a seat next to him on the couch, but she could barely make small talk. She was trembling with excitement. Knowing that she was about to take someone else’s husband was such an aphrodisiac, it was making her physically jumpy. What was Gwen doing now? Was she managing the Insta of one of her PR clients, touching up that one stray hair, or staring out the window of her office in Georgetown, praying that someone might put her rich, bored housewife self out of her misery? Lisa giggled.
“What’s so funny?” Anton cocked her head.
“Oh, I don’t know. This. Everything.”
“You mean playing video games in the middle of the day when I should be writing?” He smiled, but he looked a little hurt.
“Oh no, not that. Not that at all. I was just thinking of how when I was getting dressed this morning, I was wondering if you’d like what I was wearing.” Her heart sped up. This was it. She felt like she might explode.
He looked at her sweater and her jeans. “I like your sweater.”
“No, silly, not the sweater.”
She put the mug of coffee down and stood up. In one move, one she had practiced in front of the mirror until she got it down pat, Lisa pulled her sweater over her head and tossed it, then wiggled out of her jeans so she was standing before him in only her pink bra and thong. “I mean this.” She did a very slow twirl so he could take it in, including the barbed wire heart tattoo she had on her ass. She came back around and stood in front of him, her skin starting to get goose pimples from the cold.
For a millisecond Anton was frozen, and an icy chill went through her. Had she miscalculated? Was she about to be humiliated?
He put the game console down and stood, smiling.
“Oh, I like it,” he said. “I like it a lot.”
19
NOW
Monday, Gwen moves through the kitchen feeling like a zombie, spent, both emotionally and physically. It’s almost two in the afternoon and she hasn’t eaten lunch. She needs to eat, keep up her strength, but she has no appetite.
This morning, before Barb showed up with the boys, Gwen had researched how to break the news of death to small children. All the experts agreed to use straightforward, declarative language. No euphemisms. No avoiding the hard truth.
She might have avoided it a little longer if the twins hadn’t come into her bedroom as soon as they got home asking where Anton was, asking why they weren’t in school on a Monday.
She sat on the bed and motioned for George to sit beside her while Rafi curled up on the floor with Sababa.
There is no easy way to say this. I’m sure you’ve noticed that Daddy isn’t here. There was an accident. Daddy died. He’s not coming back.
Nothing she had researched online prepared her for the visceral way her boys responded. Not just tears, but guttural wails, like the kind a wounded animal might make. Rafi buried his face in the dog, refusing to look up, while George crawled into her lap, sobbing. Thank God for Barb. Gwen had started crying, too, and Barb tended to all three of them with soothing tones and cool, damp washcloths.
The boys were still upstairs now, spent from their big emotions and their grief. She left them curled in the king-sized bed she shared with Anton, and turned onOver the Garden Wall, a favorite show of theirs.
“That was brutal,” Gwen says as Barb enters the kitchen.
“I think it went as well as could be expected. This is just the beginning, Gwendolyn. You have to give them time to process this. You must be their rock.”
Gwen feels her shoulders tighten. She’s no one’s rock, but at least she’s making an effort and she’d like some credit for it. This morning, she showered, blow-dried her hair, applied her makeup perfectly, and picked out a nice outfit. She even cleaned the kitchen before Barb showed up with the boys, removing the evidence of a weekend spent drinking and eating junk food. “I think I’m doing a pretty good job, under the circumstances.”
“Are you?” Barb arches one eyebrow, a skill that used to both impress and intimidate Gwen when she was a girl. “And that?” Barb gestures to the dining room. “What do you call all that?”
Gwen follows her mother’s gaze, seeing with fresh eyes the result of her meltdown last night.
The fury had been so raw when she came home from Aimee’s.
Le Cannu.
Anton was fucking Lisa, right under her nose. And that bitch had pretended to be her friend.
She opened a bottle of wine, blasted Carrie Underwood, and grabbed everything she could find of Anton’s and dumped it in the dining room. All his clothing, his toiletries, his record player, and his precious record collection, which ranged from punk bands like Fugazi to 1950s jazz like Miles Davis and Dexter Gordon.