Girl in the Rearview Mirror Page 14

  “She was mad as hell. She cussed me out and ran off. I was mad as hell. I had Vic fire her the next day.

  “That’s the whole story. I promise. I’m not saying I was perfect. I should never have taken her out. Never should have had anything to do with her. But if she’s pregnant, it’s not from me.”

  “You could order a paternity test,” I said.

  He laughed bitterly. “That would imply I slept with her. All I can do is ignore it. You think I don’t know everyone’s whispering at work? That’s been her angle all along. She calls me there. Won’t leave a message, just tells them I’ll know what it’s about.” He gestured to the ultrasound. “I’m surprised that never showed up in my break room.”

  “Why would she lie? Why would she track me down—and Marina?”

  “Hell hath no fury,” he quoted, sardonic. When I frowned, unconvinced, he scratched his chin, serious again. “Money, I’m sure. Unfortunately, it’s not the first time someone has tried to extort us.”

  I was curious about that, and still not satisfied, but he leaned forward to take my hand.

  “Finn,” he said softly. “You know me. You know I’m telling the truth.”

  His touch was warm, like always.

  He rubbed my palm. “I shouldn’t have compared her to you. She’s nothing like you.” His thumb wandered up my wrist. “Will you tell Marina we need to talk? That she shouldn’t stay away?”

  The jolt of hurt was cold, like an egg cracked down my back. Of course he wanted his wife back, of course that’s what his mind was on. I stared down at the rug. “I don’t know where she is.” My voice weak and bitter.

  “She’ll call you. She’ll be tearing her hair out trying to watch Amabel. She’s always needed you. We both have.”

  My back hurt from bending toward him. “I hope you’re right.”

  “So you’ll tell her?”

  “If I talk to her. If she calls me. I don’t know what she’s thinking. What would you do, if you were her?”

  “Let me worry about that.” He helped me up and escorted me to the front door.

  Stepping into the merciless afternoon light, we both squinted.

  “Damnit,” he said. “The caterers must have served cheap booze. I haven’t had a hangover like this in years.”

  I was trying to dig my sunglasses from my purse, but they’d tangled in my key chain. I yanked them free, and they dropped to the driveway with a snap.

  Philip stooped, clumsy. “Lens cracked. I’ll have to buy you a new pair.”

  In fact, they had been a gift from the Martins last Christmas. Dolce & Gabbana.

  Philip opened my car door, and I ducked in. Like crawling into a furnace. The metal clasp of the seat belt scalded my fingers. All at once, the heat, the headache pulsing in my forehead, my nausea and embarrassment, congealed into a physical anger directed purely at Iris. Her idiotic lie had ruined everything. I should be in the Martins’ living room watching cartoons with Amabel while Philip and Marina recovered from the party.

  Philip ducked into the window. “You’ll call me if you hear from her?”

  “Yes. Will you call me?”

  “Sure.” He reached out and shielded my eyes with a cupped hand. “You’ll want to wear those shades anyway. Brutal out.”

  “I will.”

  “Take care, Finn.” As he pulled his hand away, he brushed my hair, and it fell against my face like feathers.

  After months, the shimmering energy of possibility became hard to sustain. I remembered the exact moment Philip and I changed course.

  Amabel and I were in the pool. She was only three, and bobbing in her water wings. Philip came out the back door and made a running dive into the water, whooping. We hadn’t known he was home, and the sudden large presence in our quiet afternoon was startling.

  Once Philip surfaced, Ammy laughed. He dove under and lifted her in the air so she soared and fell with a splash.

  “What do you think?” he asked her. “Should I boost Finn, too?”

  “Yes!” she screamed.

  He grinned. He looked so young right then, his shoulders bare and tan and his hair dark with water.

  “No,” I protested, but he’d already gone under.

  He coasted underwater, his trunks a vivid green. He gripped my hips and kissed my stomach. The pressure of the air in his mouth bubbled into my skin. Then he lifted me, boosting us together out of the water. We fell backward with a slap. A splash washed over us, and Amabel’s laughter was uncertain. It had probably looked violent.

  “It’s okay, sweetie,” I said. “Your dad’s just goofing around.”

  Philip went back to Amabel and tossed her again, and I swam across the pool. Underwater, I watched their legs, Amabel’s kicking and uncertain, Philip’s strong and still.

  I surfaced and rested my elbows on the edge. Dust rose off the yard like steam.

  “Finn!” At the other end of the pool, they were climbing out. “We’re going for ice cream.” Philip held Amabel’s hand, walking slowly to match her pace.

  It never happened again. The charged atmosphere between us gradually dissipated. We settled into an easy understanding. I was his ally, a relief from the demands of his family, his name. And in exchange, I got to know the real Philip, the one without his mask—flashes of the defiant younger brother, of the golden hero, of the man who’d loved someone like Tina.

  I spent the rest of the day at Bryant’s, watching movies and drinking water until the night before was reduced to an ache in my limbs. My nagging worry about Iris had quieted, and I felt clearheaded and cheerful, as if I’d just gotten over an illness.

  It wasn’t that I believed Philip entirely—he’d certainly downplayed the story. Maybe they’d danced at the club, or he’d touched her, concealing it as accidental in the crowded restaurant. But I did believe he’d recoiled at her insistence.

  When Bryant called, I was tempted to gloat that I’d heard the real story from Philip, that I knew the family would be fine. Instead, when he asked what I’d done all day, I invented a trip to the gym, a nap.

  “You should go out,” he said. “Take advantage of the night off.”

  I hummed. Before I worked for the Martins, I’d hung out with other waitresses, or the suburban moms from the developer’s office. Those ties, already tentative, easily slipped away when I began spending more time with Bryant. I had nothing in common with them anymore.

  “I’m not in the mood,” I said. “I’m not going to drink for a long time.”

  He laughed. “Poor baby. Listen, I’ve got to run to another meeting. Let’s talk tomorrow.”

  I comforted myself with the fact that Bryant didn’t have friends, either. Associates, yes, contacts, a social circle, but nothing intimate. Outside of me.

  I took myself out to dinner at a fancy steak house in Scottsdale, popular with Bryant’s crowd. I decided to eat at the bar, where someone might recognize me and stop and say hello. And if not, fine. I ordered a grilled salad and a glass of wine.

  I speared a wedge of romaine and sliced it with a steak knife. The bartenders all looked like Guy, with varying hairstyles. I wondered if Iris had lied to him, too. If he knew she wasn’t pregnant, he might tell her to drop it.

  I glanced around the dining room, a flash of anxiety as if Iris might be there. The diners were mostly older couples in suits and flowered dresses, having dinner before a movie, as well as the inevitable tables of sunburned tourists, almost all men, still in the polos they’d worn golfing, their voices loud from drinking in the sun all day.

  My phone buzzed.

  Marina, the screen read. Marina calling. Slide to answer.

  Though everyone else had expected this, I hadn’t. I knew how she’d acted when she’d left. Her anger when I’d offered to watch Amabel.

  I swiped the screen. “Marina?”

  “Hello? Finn?” The voice on the line was nervous, sharp, fast. “Finn?”

  “Marina?”

  “Of course. Listen, are you available t
onight? I need you. Hurry.”

  18

  The Phoenix skyline was a cluster of bright lights that came to a disappointing apex in a row of tallish buildings, not skyscrapers made of stone, but featureless glass cubes reflecting the pretty lights back at themselves. Marina was hiding here, in a luxury hotel named for a letter of the alphabet, like a British spy.

  When I was seventeen, I worked for the same hotel chain. The resort was on Reed Lake, a few hours from Chicago, and drew guests from the city like animals to a watering hole. They were rich, scribbling signatures on their bills without glancing at the amount owed. The men wore pressed chinos, shirts in sunny yellow or pure white. Their feet were bare in boat shoes. Mornings, they bought coffee in the shop off the lobby, read folded newspapers, skin throwing off the grassy smell of the hotel soap. The women walked in languid pairs to the spa or led children to the pool.

  Afternoons, everyone went out on the water. On breaks, I walked down to the dock, hands plunged in the pockets of my khaki uniform, admiring the sleek motorboats bobbing at the pier, sides contoured like racehorses’ flanks. Far off in the oblong oval of the lake, boats darted, slicing across the sparkling water and bouncing back through their own wakes. Sometimes a skier trailed on a rope, or kids on an inner tube, legs flailing in the chop.

  At night, darkened with sunburn and hoarse from yelling through the spray, the guests gathered on the patio under strings of yellow lights and ate and drank more. They never tired or ran out of things to say.

  Watching them, I felt awake, shimmering with energy. I coveted the impeccable polish of their veneer, their leisurely self-assurance.

  My best friend, Erica Everett, lived in one of the grand old mansions on the lakefront. The Everetts had been visiting the resort for years, coming to dinner or for a round of tennis, usually motoring over in their vintage red speedboat and parking in the marina. The Everetts had gotten me the job, and liked to pop in at the front desk, Erica smirking at my white polo and pleated khakis, Mrs. Everett praising my work ethic.

  After work, I walked over to their house. I often slept in the spare bedroom, with the toile wallpaper and ornate canopy bed that felt like my own. When I had to work first shift, I’d slip out early, before anyone was up, and walk the shore of the lake to the hotel, crossing the private beaches with my sandals in my hand, the calm early waves lapping over the tops of my feet. The feeling lingered even after I changed into my regulation closed-toed oxfords.

  Tonight, I crossed the hotel lobby without slowing to take it in, as Natalie would have done. In the elevator up to Marina’s room, I saw my reflection with a jolt of unrecognition. My hair was drawn back into a sculptural twist of wire, a style Mrs. Everett had worn.

  I hadn’t thought of the Everetts in a long time—not about those early, perfect days, at least. They were still as sharp as a film. The house, the family, their delight at my delight—Natalie’s never done this! they’d exclaim. Tennis, sailing, waterskiing. Using a waffle iron. Eating lobster. Lounging in the sauna, Erica taught me to spit on the heating unit and make it hiss.

  Shaking away the uncomfortable memories, I knocked at room 1715. The drone of a TV leaked into the hall.

  Marina opened the door with a finger to her lips. A cloth headband held her hair off her forehead. Fully exposed, her face was pale and bony. She wasn’t wearing makeup, and her features ran together, lips into skin, eyebrows hardly visible. She looked like her own ghost.

  “Come in,” she whispered. She crept back into the room, leaving me to close the door. She collapsed in an armchair and took up a glass of wine from the floor.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  She muted the TV. “Keep your voice down. She finally went to sleep.”

  The door to the bedroom was cracked open. I stuck my head through. Amabel was curled in one of two queen beds, breathing wetly, Patrick clamped to her neck.

  When I turned to ask what had happened, Marina was absorbed in the Home Shopping Network, ignoring me.

  I crossed the room to turn on a lamp, and the illuminated mess was startling. Empty glasses and wrappers littered every surface. Styrofoam packaging was strewn in a corner; wet towels trampled over the bathroom floor. The coffee table displayed the remains of dinner, a grilled cheese, one bite in each half, and fish that was starting to smell. I put the plates out in the hall and filled a glass with water in the kitchenette.

  “Quiet!” Marina hissed. She waved the glass off. “Stop fussing.” She pulled her legs under her, taking her slender feet in her hands.

  I sat on the couch and was jabbed by a sword-shaped plastic toothpick. I rolled it in my palm. It was slick with grease.

  On the muted TV, two women admired a gaudy gold necklace on a model’s chest. Their witchy hands stroked the chain, and the model’s chin clenched in a brave smile.

  “I thought this would put her to sleep,” Marina said. “Now I can’t stop watching.”

  “We’ve been worried about you,” I said.

  “I hate when people speak in the collective,” she muttered.

  “Philip and me. The Senator. Your friends.”

  “Which friends?”

  “The party guests.”

  “Philip went ahead with the gala?” She snorted. “I’d have expected him to be thrilled to get out of it.”

  Her sarcasm annoyed me. “Would you rather have canceled?”

  “I suppose not.” She pointed at the bottle on the floor. “Could you?”

  I knelt to retrieve it, and she filled her glass messily. “What did you tell them?”

  “That you’d gone to Florida to see your aunt.”

  A lazy laugh. “Who came up with that one? Jim?” She scratched her ankle. “Did he attend?”

  “Of course,” I said, surprised.

  “He did,” she murmured. “That was the least he could do.”

  I was taken aback—she’d never talked about the Senator in such a tone before—but she asked, casually, “How did it go?”

  They talked about you, I imagined saying; they laughed at you. If only you were nicer. If only you didn’t have to be so perfect all the time. She was drunk, distressed, and the perimeter between us had lowered. I might offer her advice.

  “It went well,” I said. “Big crowd. The food was good.”

  She blinked, seeming to remember that I wasn’t a planned guest.

  I looked away. On TV, a cubic zirconia replica of Elizabeth Taylor’s wedding ring was selling for four payments of $39.99.

  “Junk,” Marina remarked.

  I suddenly felt impatient with her wallowing. “I saw Philip this afternoon. He wants to talk to you.”

  She eyed my face, as if counting my pores. “Is that so? Did he tell you why I left?”

  “Not exactly.” I ran the toothpick along the seam of the couch cushion. “I heard a rumor . . . he was seeing someone. I assumed you’d heard it, too.”

  Her face gave nothing away.

  “He told me what really happened. It’s not as bad as it seems.”

  She laughed. “He’s a liar.”

  “Give him a chance,” I said.

  “Oh, Finn.” She sighed. “I won’t get you on my side, will I?” She slumped back.

  Too late, I noticed her real disappointment. She might have confided in me, but I’d shut her out.

  “What happened earlier?” I said gently, trying to make up for it. “You sounded upset when you called. Is Amabel all right?”

  “That depends on your definition. She’s not hurt or deprived of anything. She is bratty, willful, and spoiled.”

  “I’m sorry. Kids have days.”

  Marina threw her head back. “That could be a yogic mantra. Kids have days, kids have days.” She released a deep, frustrated sigh, more of a growl. “You’ve no idea the time I’ve had.”

  After leaving the house, she realized she had nowhere to go. She couldn’t go to a friend’s; everyone knew about the party and would ask questions. Amabel limited her options. She was a
lready whining.

  Marina had felt absurd. The museum was just a few miles away. She could easily turn back. But the thought of facing everyone made her panic. Her heart was pounding, her palms sweating; she might have to pull over and be sick.

  Soon it was rush hour, and traffic clogged around her. She took Amabel to an anonymous restaurant, the sort where ribs and burgers were the choices of entrée. Amabel refused to eat, then begged for ice cream, which made a mess. Marina couldn’t hear herself think.

  With no plan, she checked into the hotel. Told herself in the morning she’d decide what to do. But Amabel woke her at dawn for a day even worse than the one before. Marina did all she could. Took Amabel to the mall and bought her everything she wanted. They saw a movie and ate at the food court and petted the filthy puppies at the pet store. Back at the hotel, while Amabel was supposed to be napping, Marina took a shower. Amabel picked up the phone on the nightstand, called the front desk, and announced she’d run away from home. A manager came up, knocking with increased urgency until Marina answered the door, shampoo still in her hair. The manager was embarrassed, Marina humiliated. She retreated to the bathroom to splash water on her face. She counted to ten. When she put in her earrings one spun into the sink and vanished down the drain.

  She called me from the hallway, hiding from Amabel as if she were the child.

  Then, of course, Amabel fell asleep.

  “You’re going to say she was naughty because of the sudden change in plan. When I was a kid, we’d have loved this.” She gestured at the hotel room, as if the plush sofa and textured wallpaper were the kinds of things kids went nuts for. Her eyes were red. She was wounded, not just irritated. “Why is she like this? What did I do wrong?”

  “Maybe she picked up on your tension,” I said carefully.

  She laughed, her mouth turning down. “She was a great distraction from it.” She ran a finger around the rim of her glass. “If you had any idea what I’ve been going through . . .” Her shoulders had folded inward like an umbrella.

  “Talk to him,” I said. “You can’t stay here forever.”