“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “Leave it.”
“I can do it,” he said. He moved the mouse back and forth. “I know what the problem is; I just need to . . . Damn it.”
He swore again. Softly at first, and then louder. His voice became like a blow. She winced each time.
And as his fury rose, a kind of matching fury rose within her, because she could already see exactly how the night was going to proceed, and how it could have proceeded if she hadn’t made such a “catastrophic error.”
The seafood platter she’d prepared would sit there uneaten. The pavlova would slide straight from the tray into the bin. All that time and effort and money wasted. She hated waste. It made her feel sick.
So when she said, “Please, Perry, just leave it,” there was frustration in her voice. That was her fault. Maybe if she’d spoken nicely. Been more patient. Said nothing.
He swiveled the chair to face her. His eyes were already shiny with rage. Too late. He was gone. It was all over, red rover.
And yet she didn’t retreat. She refused to retreat. She kept fighting right to the end because of the injustice of it, the ridiculousness of it. I asked him to help fix the computer. It should not be like this, a part of her continued to inwardly rage, even as the yelling began and her heart pounded and her muscles tensed in readiness. It’s not fair. It’s not right.
It was even worse than usual because the boys weren’t at home. They didn’t have to keep their voices down, to hiss at each other behind closed doors. The house was too big for the neighbors to hear them shout. It was almost like they both relished the opportunity to fight without boundaries.
Celeste walked down toward the monkey bars. They were in a cool, shady bottom corner of the playground. The boys would love playing here when they started school.
Perry was doing chin-ups on the monkey bars while the boys counted. His shoulders moved gracefully. He had to hold his legs up high because the monkey bars were so low to the ground. He’d always been athletic.
Was there some sick, damaged part of Celeste that actually liked living like this and wanted this shameful, dirty marriage? That’s how she thought of it. As if she and Perry engaged in some sort of strange, disgusting and perverted sexual practice.
And sex was part of it.
There was always sex afterward. When it was all over. At about five a.m. Fierce, angry sex, with tears that slid onto each other’s faces and tender apologies and the words murmured over and over: Never again, I swear on my life, never again, this has to stop, we have to stop this, we should get help, never again.
“Come on,” she said to the boys. “Let’s get to the uniform shop before it closes.”
Perry dropped easily to the ground and grabbed a twin under each arm. “Gotcha!”
Did she love him as much as she hated him? Did she hate him as much as she loved him?
“We should try another counselor,” she’d said to him early this morning.
“You’re right,” he’d said, as if it were an actual possibility. “When I get back. We’ll talk about it then.”
He was going away the next day. Vienna. It was a “summit” his firm was sponsoring. He would be delivering the keynote address on something terribly complex and global. There would be a lot of acronyms and incomprehensible jargon, and he’d stand there with a little pointer, making a red dot of light zip about on the PowerPoint presentation prepared by his executive assistant.
Perry was away often. He sometimes felt like an aberration in her life. A visitor. Her real life took place when he wasn’t there. What happened never mattered all that much because he was always about to leave, the next day or the next week.
Two years ago, they’d gone to a counselor. Celeste had been buoyant with hope, but as soon as she saw the cheap vinyl couch and the counselor’s eager, earnest face, she knew it was a mistake. She watched Perry weigh up his superior intelligence and social standing relative to the counselor and knew that this would be their first and last visit.
They never told her the truth. They talked about how Perry found it frustrating that Celeste didn’t get up early enough and was always running late. Celeste said that sometimes “Perry lost his temper.”
How could they admit to a stranger what went on in their marriage? The shame of it. The ugliness of their behavior. They were a fine-looking couple. People had been telling them that for years. They were admired and envied. They had all the privileges in the world. Overseas travel. A beautiful home. It was ungracious and ungrateful of them to behave the way they did.
“Just stop it,” that nice eager woman would have surely said, disgusted and disapproving.
Celeste didn’t want to tell her either. She wanted her to guess. She wanted her to ask the right question. But she never did.
After they left the counselor’s office, they were both so exhilarated to be out of there, their performance over, that they went to a hotel bar in the middle of the afternoon and had a drink, and flirted with each other, and they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Halfway through his drink, Perry suddenly stood, took her hand and led her to the reception desk. They literally “got a room.” Ha ha. So funny, so sexy. It was as though the counselor really had fixed everything. Because after all, how many married couples did that? Afterward she felt seedy and sexy and disheveled and filled with despair.
“So where’s the uniform shop?” said Perry as they walked back up into the school’s main quadrangle.
“I don’t know,” said Celeste. How should I know? Why should I know?
“The uniform shop, did you say? It’s over here.”
Celeste turned around. It was that intense little woman with the glasses from the orientation day. The one whose daughter said Ziggy tried to choke her. The curly-haired little girl was with her.
“I’m Renata,” said the woman. “I met you at the orientation day last year. You’re friends with Madeline Mackenzie, aren’t you? Amabella, stop that. What are you doing?” The little girl was holding on to her mother’s white shirt and shyly twisting her body behind her mother’s. “Come and say hello. These are some of the boys who will be in your class. They’re identical twins. Isn’t that so interesting?” She looked at Perry, who had deposited the boys at his feet. “How in the world do you ever tell them apart?”