The rest of the night is blurry. She moved through each room of the house as she cried loudly, wineglass in hand, music blaring, searching for evidence of the lying, cheating bastard’s crimes.
The cut was deep, deeper than she’d ever experienced. The humiliation of being cheated on once again was bad enough. But Anton screwing her friend magnified it a thousandfold. All those moments she had let her guard down around Lisa, all those times she revealed some vulnerability—Lisa must have been laughinginside. Did they laugh at her together? Did they mock her cluelessness?
Imagining them together felt like a physical assault. Gwen had been sick last night. She’d thrown up all over the kitchen floor. Sobbing, she’d cleaned up her vomit.
After her righteous anger had dissolved into self-pity, she put the song “Take Me as You Please” on the speakers. It was a song she could ugly cry to. And why shouldn’t she? Her life was shattered. She was on her own with two small boys. Her husband and one of her closest friends had betrayed her. She had curled up on the sofa with Sababa, taken a Xanax, and closed her eyes as the song repeated until she’d passed out.
“I just… I thought I would get started clearing out some stuff.” Gwen walks into the dining room to examine last night’s handiwork. She doesn’t remember dragging Anton’s Olivetta Lettera, a robin’s-egg blue vintage Italian typewriter, into the room, but she must have, because it was thrown on top of his winter coats on the floor.
Barb gets up and follows Gwen into the dining room. “Looks like someone had themselves a little tantrum. Well, you’re entitled to one. But, honey, this is no way to go about things. We need to get this cleaned up before the boys ask about it.” She bends down and picks up the typewriter. “I hope you weren’t going to toss this. Did it ever occur to you that George and Rafi might want a few things to remember their father by?”
Gwen feels her face burn. She is as embarrassed at this moment as she was in tenth grade when her mother read her diary and learned Gwen had given a hand job to Skip Blandon after the Christmas party at the club. She’s a child again, emotional and immature, disorganized and hopeless.
“What is going on, Gwen?”
“What’s going on?” She turns to face her mother, seeking some sign of support or kindness. “My husband was murdered a few days ago.” Gwen wipes the tears from her eyes. “Anton wascheating. Okay? He was cheating on me again, and this time it was with someone I know. A neighbor.”
Barb inhales sharply. “Not with that gardener woman? With the curly hair?”
“Who, Aimee? No. Not her. It’s my other neighbor. The one who was watching the boys, actually. The one who called you.”
Gwen can hear her mother’s sharp intake of breath. “Are you absolutely sure? Is there the tiniest chance you might be wrong?”
Gwen pulls out a dining room chair and sits. “Maybe.” Her mother’s question unsettles her. There is the tiniest sliver of a possibility that the Le Cannu pen was actually Anton’s, that Marcus borrowed it, and that’s how it ended up at Lisa’s house. That this whole thing is a giant misunderstanding and she’s jumped to a terrible conclusion. “But I think it’s true.”
Her mother sits in the chair beside her. “Think?”
How can she explain to Barb what her gut is telling her? How Anton’s behavior had changed over the past few months, how he seemed happier and less like a caged cat. How he was spending money that he didn’t have. How the writing was flowing suddenly. How could she explain the writing she found in his notebooks that was supposedly fiction but was obviously not? Or the pen.
No, on its own, not one of these facts was a smoking gun. But it added up to the truth, and every part of her knew it.
“Sweetie, I think we could both use a drink before we tackle this.”
“It’s not even two o’clock, Mom.”
“Well, it’s seven o’clock in Liverpool, and that’s where Grammy Ann is from, so let’s drink to her.”
She stands up. It was the same line she used when Gwen was growing up and she came home from school to see her mother already drinking. Barb comes back with two tumblers filled with a dark liquid and rattling ice cubes.
“What is this?” Gwen asks, taking the glass.
“Jack and Coke. The Jack will dull the pain, the Coke will give you a boost. Now, don’t argue. Just drink.”
They clink glasses and each takes a long sip. “Now, you may be right about Anton. And that witch of a neighbor. But you need to decide how much you are going to let that affect you going forward. You know what they say—history belongs to the victor. And by dint of still being alive, you’re the victor. He may have been the professional writer, but now it’s you who gets to write the story. However you behave, whatever you say—to your boys, to the world, to yourself, and yes, even to that awful woman—will become the truth. Take that responsibility very seriously.”
“What are you saying?” Gwen asks. “I pretend none of the bad stuff ever happened?”
“I’m saying let it die with him.”
Easy for you to say.What Barb doesn’t know is that Gwen isn’t the victor, not really.
Because thatlusciouswoman withdevouring eyesthat Anton wrote about not only exists in real life but lives on the same block.
And Gwen knew her husband. How talkative he got after sex. He liked to smoke a Camel unfiltered and expound on life like the hero of a French art film.
There’s no escaping the possibility that in one of those post-coital conversations, Anton had chosen to unburden himself to Lisa, just as he tried to confess to Scott.
And that terrifies Gwen, because the chances are close to nil that the whore will keep her mouth shut.