The last secret_ a novel - Mary McGarry Morris [115]
Bob sits, knees wide, sobbing into his hands. His beige V-neck sweater is stained and baggy, his pant cuffs frayed. He wears old, dirty sneakers. The stitching on the right one is torn. Compared with Ken, he always looked messy. Robin used to joke that even new clothes looked secondhand on Bob. Nora always felt tolerated by him, easily dismissed and overlooked. Ken's wife and Robin's friend, but to him always the outsider. She had no history, didn't really get them. Together they could still be children while she was the menacing grownup, watching them trifle their lives away. Suddenly, she despises him, a snobbish, shallow weakling.
“I can't believe it. She's changing Lyra's birth certificate. She wants Ken's name on it.” He rubs his eyes. “The way she said it, like, now all the rest is details.”
“Which it probably is,” she says coldly. He's yet to say he's devastated, sad, disappointed, or even doubtful that he's not Lyra's father. She remembers Robin's complaining about his lack of enthusiasm. About the pregnancy, she wonders, or the child herself? Has he known all along? She can't bring herself to ask.
“It's all my fault. I know it is,” he weeps. “I just kept fucking everything up. Everything. She kept telling me, ‘I can't live like this,’ but, I don't know, I just couldn't get a handle on things. I tried, but then I'd … I'd just … and now … now it's all gone. Everything.” Face in his hands, he hunches over his knees and can't stop his wheezy sobbing.
“Don't,” she says, fighting tears now. “Don't blame yourself Please, Bob.” She throws up her hands. “They didn't care about us. And we just made it easier for them, that's all.”
He looks up. Odd, the way he peers at her, more bewildered than distraught, or even angry.
“It's not just Robin.” He chokes on her name.
“No. I know.” Sympathy stanched by his knee-jerk defense, she is amazed that he continues to make excuses for Robin. Pathetic. He expects her to blame Ken, not his dear wife.
“It's Ken. He's like my brother. I can't remember a time not knowing him. All my life … we were … we were inseparable.”
In her disbelief, she can only stare at him.
“What am I going to do, Nora?” he pleads. “I don't know what to do.”
She doesn't answer and instead pats his hand. For without Robin and Ken to love and resent, what will he do? How to justify anything now, sobriety, drunkenness? They've been his whole life, his two lode stars, brilliant but blinding in their complete attraction to one another. They've loved and coddled, and used him.
Eddie has been trying to see Robin for days. She won't answer the phone or come to the door, why? he pleads, rushing alongside her mother to the house.
“See!” He holds out a fistful of money. “I just want to help her, that's all. I gotta tell her what's going on. Before something happens.”
The old bitch flips open her cell phone, to call 911, she warns.
So he's back in the car. His whole world has collapsed. He knows he should leave, just go before it's too late, but that's the problem. Knows he should, but can't, because that's exactly what he needs: something to happen. It's this feeling, like she's stuck in his brain, and he can't get past it until she's out. It's always this way, only this time, worse. This time he's scared. Because he's getting old, because his head's so messed up. It always hurts. He can't even eat. He's not thinking straight. Usually comes on fast, suddenly, the black rage and he strikes. And then it's over.
But this time he's consumed. This time he can't do what needs to be done and move on. Nothing's logical this time. The pieces don't fit. Hasn't slept in days. Maybe he's dying,