Things I Want My Daughters to Know_ A Novel - Elizabeth Noble [56]
Jennifer didn’t speak.
“Can you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
AFTER THEY’D GONE THEIR SEPARATE WAYS, LISA REALIZED JENNIFER hadn’t said anything more about Stephen. She was very good at that. Being evasive. She didn’t know what was wrong between the two of them. And she guessed Jennifer didn’t want her to.
Not that she had time to worry about Jennifer as well as everything else. You were supposed to start the New Year with a clear, fresh head, weren’t you, but she felt like the sky was getting lower and lower, coming down on her. She wasn’t sleeping well, waking at about 3:00 A.M. every morning, unable to doze off again, her brain already fast-forwarding, and that hardly ever happened. Amanda had gone a bit quiet on her since the text saying she was going away for a bit. That was vintage Amanda. She didn’t know how her mum hadn’t gone crazy, wondering where she was, and how she was; and in the same breath, Lisa pondered why she now felt somehow compelled to take on the mantle of worry about her sister, when no one had asked her to. Oldest sibling syndrome. The curse of the firstborn.
Andy. Andy. She realized she was wandering aimlessly around now. A noncommittal shopper at the best of times, she was lost in a sea of glassware and cutlery and table linens. She didn’t want any of this stuff. She felt in the back of her pocket for her car parking ticket and made for the nearest lift that would get her out of there.
Once safe and alone in her car, she rested her head against the back of the seat and closed her eyes so she couldn’t see the impatient drivers, their cars filing past at two miles per hour, waiting for her to create an empty space.
For the first time in ages, she let herself really think about what she’d done. To Andy. It was always in the wings, on the periphery of her thoughts these days, but mostly she kept it away, refused to confront it head-on. Now, talking about Mum, she couldn’t stop it.
She had had an affair herself, of course. She was amazed no one had guessed. In her mind, the scarlet letter had been neon, and flashing. How else could she have become so practiced at the justification, and the excuses, and the mitigation, if she hadn’t spent months talking herself through the same things? The mantra of the unfaithful.
It was over. It was so over. But it had happened. No one knew, except for the two of them. She had gotten away with it. She was supposed to do the justification thing and move on, forget about it. Mum had clearly tried to do just that. But Lisa guessed that Amanda’s letter proved what she was beginning to believe must be true—that you could never forget about it, or really forgive yourself. However great the justification, however much time might pass…
His name was Christopher Absalom. He had been managing a new development of town houses and apartments, out in the part of the East End of London that was being gentrified. Her firm had won the contract to decorate the show apartments, and she’d met him when she went out there for a site visit. He had made her wish, the first time she’d laid eyes on him, that she wasn’t wearing a hard hat.
It had been purely physical. What did that mean? She’d asked herself that question, confessing out loud to herself alone in the car. Purely physical. It meant she didn’t want anything from him, apart from what he gave her in bed. Apart from the sensations of his hands and his mouth