Heart of the Matter - Emily Giffin [66]
But instead she puts her hand in her pocket and pulls out her phone that she has kept near her all day and types a rapid text: We’re home. Everything good. Call if you can. Charlie wants to say good night.
She hits send, tells herself she is doing it for her child. She is doing it for her child.
Seconds later, the phone rings.
Valerie jumps. “It’s him!” she says, pressing the talk button and holding the phone up to Charlie’s ear.
“Hi, Dr. Nick,” Charlie says. “I didn’t get to say good-bye to you.”
Valerie strains to hear his response. “No need for good-byes, buddy. I’ll see you soon.”
“When?” Charlie asks.
“How about tomorrow? Ask your mom if you’re free?”
“Are we free tomorrow, Mommy?” Charlie asks.
“Yes,” Valerie answers quickly.
Nick says something else that she can’t make out and Charlie hands her the phone. “He wants to talk to you, Mommy,” he says, replacing his mask before yawning and closing his eyes.
She takes the phone and says, “Hi, there . . . I’m sorry to bother you . . . on your day off . . . at night. . .”
“Stop it,” Nick says. “You know I love when you call... I really wanted to come by today . . . I miss you. I miss you both.”
Valerie walks out of the room, leaving Charlie’s door open a crack, and whispers in the hall, “We miss you, too.”
Silence crackles over the phone as Valerie makes her way to her own bed. “Is it too late now?” he finally says.
“Now?” she asks, confused.
“Can I stop by for a minute? Take a peek at him?”
Valerie closes her eyes and catches her breath long enough to tell him yes. Long enough to tell herself, for the hundredth time, that they are friends. Just friends.
21
Tessa
In the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, I feel myself slipping into a holidays-suck-and-so-do-I malaise. It starts one morning when I am running late to pick up Ruby from school. My hair still wet and Frankie covered in crumbs, I strap him into his car seat, throw my minivan in reverse, and promptly slam it into the garage door—the closed garage door—resulting in a cool three thousand dollars’ worth of damage.
Later that afternoon, in an apparent attempt to make me feel better, Larry, the tattooed, mustached garage-door repairman straight out of central casting, informs me that it happens way more than I’d think.
“And would ya believe it?” he continues in a thick Boston accent. “Most often the men ah to blame.”
“Really?” I say, mildly intrigued by this bit of trivia.
Larry nods earnestly and says, “I guess ‘cause men ah busiah, ya know?”
I give him an incredulous look, anger bubbling inside me as I resist the urge to share with Larry just how many things I was mentally juggling when I left the house that day—way more than my husband could have had in his head when he sailed out the door with a thermos of coffee and his new Beck CD. Whistling.
Beyond my own feelings of idiocy and Larry’s sexist commentary, what disturbed me the most about the whole incident was my gut reaction as I stood there in the garage, assessing the crash scene. Namely, Nick’s going to kill me. It is a sentiment I’ve heard time and again—almost always uttered by my stay-at-home-mother friends—and one that has always grated on my nerves, right up there with women who try to hide purchases from their husbands, for fear of getting in trouble. Which always makes me want to say, “Is he your father or your husband?”
To be clear, I wasn’t afraid of Nick, but I was worried that he’d be disgusted with me. That he’d secretly wish his wife were a little more together. And I can’t remember ever feeling that way before.
The fact that Nick turned out to be understanding, even mildly amused, when I confessed my mental lapse, wasn’t much of a comfort because it didn’t really change the underlying truth—that the power was shifting between us and I was becoming a needy, approval-seeking wife, someone I didn’t recognize, someone my mother warned me about.
Several days later, the feeling returns after Ryan, my ex-fiancé, finds me on Facebook, requesting