Heart of the Matter - Emily Giffin [40]
As she makes her way toward the heart of Wellesley, a light rain begins to fall. She puts her windshield wipers on the slowest setting, the mist on her window giving her the veiled feeling of protection. She is undercover, gathering clues—about what she is not quite sure. She makes a left turn, then two rights onto the street—which is elegantly called a “boulevard.” It is broad and tree-lined with neat sidewalks and classic, older homes. They are more modest than she expected, but the lots are deep and generous. She drives more slowly, watching the odd numbers on the right side of the road diminish until she finds the house she is looking for—a storybook Tudor. Her heart races as she takes in the details. The twin chimneys flanking the slate roof. The huge birch tree with low, climbable branches just off center in the front yard. The pink tricycle and old-school red rubber ball, both abandoned in the driveway. The warm yellow light in one upstairs bedroom. She wonders if it is his—theirs—or one of the children’s, and imagines them all tucked neatly inside. She hopes that they are happy as she does a three-point turn and drives home.
Sometime later, she is taking a bath, her favorite Saturday-night pastime. Normally, she reads a magazine or paperback book in the tub, but tonight she closes her eyes, keeping her mind as blank as possible. She stays submerged, the soapy water up to her chin, until she feels herself nod off and it occurs to her that she might be tired enough to fall asleep and actually drown. Charlie would be an orphan, forced to forever speculate whether her death was a suicide —and if it were somehow his fault. She shakes the morbid thought from her head as she stands and steps out of the tub, wrapping herself in her coziest, largest bath towel — a bath sheet, to be precise. She remembers the day she ordered the set of fine, Egyptian-cotton towels, the most luxurious ones she could find, even opting for a French-blue monogram with her initials for an extra five dollars per towel. It was the day she received her first bonus check at her law firm, a reward for billing two thousand hours — a small fortune she had planned to spend on everyday creature comforts. After the towels, she ordered Austrian goose-down pillows, sateen sheets, cashmere cable-knit throws, heavy cast-iron cookware, and fine china for twelve — quality domestic goods that most women acquire when they marry, before they buy a house or have a baby. She was doing it backward, maybe, but she was doing it all by herself. Who needs a man? she thought with every item she added to her cart.
It became her mantra. As she worked long hours at her firm, saving more money until she and Charlie could finally move out of their depressing basement apartment — with its stark white walls the landlord wouldn’t let her paint and the perpetual smell of curry and marijuana from the neighbors across the hall — into the cozy Cape Cod they still live in now. As she shoveled the driveway in the winter, watered grass seed in the spring, pressure-washed their front porch in the summer, raked leaves in the fall. As she did all the things to make a home and a life for Charlie. She was self-sufficient, self-reliant, self-contained. She was every empowered lyric that she heard on the radio: I am woman, hear me roar, . . I will survive. . .R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
Yet tonight, after she eats a peanut butter and jelly sandwich over the kitchen sink and tucks herself neatly into bed, wearing her favorite white flannel nightgown with eyelet trim, she feels a sharp lonesome pang, an undeniable sense that something is missing. At first she believes