Mrs. Perfect

Art glances back and forth at us. “This house?”

I suddenly can’t speak. Blinking, I look away and shove two fingers into a tiny pocket on my black slacks, fingers curling against the fabric in silent protest. I can’t do this. Can’t do this. Can’t.

“Yeah,” Nathan says. “Can we do the paperwork now?”

“Sure,” Art answers, and I see him glance my way, but I still can’t look at him. This is so brutal. It hurts so much. “Let me just get my briefcase from the car.”

While Art goes to his car, I go to the kitchen and crouch in the pantry and cover my head and open my mouth in a silent howl. Not my house. Not my house. I’d give anything if we could just keep the house.

But Nathan’s stressed. Nathan’s breaking. I can’t have my husband fall apart. Can’t have my family fall apart. We can do this. We can do it. I can do it. I can.

I stand and leave the pantry, close the door behind me, and step into the powder bath, where I check my face, wiping away mascara smudges and all hint of tears. I smooth my cashmere sweater’s hem, slide my hands down my slacks.

I join Art and Nathan in the living room. They were talking quietly, and both look up at me quickly. “I’m sorry,” Art says as I sit in a wing chair facing the couch.

I don’t know what Nathan’s said to Art, but whatever it is, it generates quiet sympathy. I try to smile. “Thank you.”

With pen in hand, Art swiftly goes through the paperwork. We’ve done this so many times together, and Art knows how we do business. We’re not cutthroats, and we’re not petty. Nor do we believe in gouging people. Our best offer is, indeed, our best offer. With that in mind, we don’t want others to play games with us, either. But Art knows all that about us.

The questions Art asks are so very familiar. When do we want the listing to go live in the computer? When do we want to schedule our first Realtor open house? How do we want to price it? What are we willing to accept?

I finally speak, my hands clasped before me. “We need to get as much as we can for it. But at the same time, we need it to sell quickly, too. Nathan’s going to be gone, so I’ll be the one here while the house is being shown.”

Art looks back and forth again. “You two are okay, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Nathan and I answer simultaneously, even as I mentally add, Or at least we’re going to be.

Nathan walks Art to his car. I go to the kitchen to start dinner. I’m numb as I go through the motions of measuring the spices for the lime chili marinade I use for chicken fajitas. I’m numb as I whisk the marinade, numb as I pull the package of free-range chicken out of the fridge and rinse the six plump breasts. But it’s okay to be numb. Numb, I won’t cry. Numb, I can cope with anything. It’s how I got through Mom leaving us. It’s how I got through the whispers and snickers at school.

I’ve just poured the marinade over the chicken breasts when Nathan enters the kitchen, opens the refrigerator, and starts to pull out a beer but then replaces it. He pours himself a Scotch instead. “Want anything?” he asks, putting away the bottle of Johnnie Walker Black.

“No, thank you.” I can’t drink now. I’ll end up morbidly depressed. Bawling my eyes out. Eating an entire package of Double Stuf Oreos.

Nathan takes a drink, exhales slowly, and then takes another sip. “We have to tell the girls,” he says, leaning against one counter and rubbing the back of his neck.

I nod as I slice the red, yellow, and green bell peppers into narrow strips. I can’t even imagine telling the girls. Brooke was fourteen months old when we moved in. And Tori came home here from the hospital. It’s the only home she’s ever known.

The house isn’t just a status symbol. It’s their home. It’s where Nathan and I were going to make a storybook life for our kids and give them all the love, warmth, and stability we’d never known.

But there will be other homes, I remind myself fiercely, reaching for a sweet onion. It’s not as if we won’t have a home again. It’ll just take some time.

Not that it’ll make breaking the news any easier.

“How do we do this?” I ask Nathan as I finish chopping the onion. “Shall you tell them or shall I?”

He just stares across the airy kitchen, his jaw so tight that I can see all the tendons in his neck outlined. “I don’t care.”

I know him better than I know anyone, but we are both so alone right now, so isolated despite our efforts to come together, to work this out together.

Maybe we don’t really want this to work out.

Maybe Nathan wants out. All the way out.

I can’t think that way. Won’t think that way. I refuse to make this worse than it already is.

“We’ll just tell them together,” I say, washing my hands and drying them on one of the French linen dish towels.

I should never have given up responsibility.

I should never have accepted financial dependency.

I should have remained aware, alert, an adult.

“We’ll do it together,” I repeat, and this time I move toward him, put my hand on the middle of his rigid back. He stiffens, but I leave it there.

We break the news after dinner before I serve dessert. I’m not sure why we chose that moment, but suddenly Nathan and I looked at each other and we knew. We had to. Had to get it over with.

“As I’m working in Omaha,” Nathan says, “your mother and I have decided to make some changes. We’ve decided to sell the house. The house goes on the market a week from today.”

There’s a moment of incredulous silence, and then all the girls are talking at once.

Jemma’s voice rises above the rest. “But this is our house. This is where we live.”

I know exactly how she’s feeling. I spent years looking at real estate, trying to find the right lot, the right place for our perfect future home. I spent another year drafting, planning, poring over magazines, talking to designers and architects, driving around neighborhoods, looking, thinking, dreaming.

Dreaming.

“I’m sorry, Jemma,” I say gently, reaching over to cover her hand.

She rips her hand out from beneath mine. “Mom, no. No.”

“Jemma, I’m sorry, it’s done.”

“Noooooo!” Jemma’s scream fills the living room. “No! No.”

I don’t even look at Nathan. I can feel his pain. He’s in hell. He knows I love this house passionately. I know the girls love this house. We’re giving up a part of our hearts, but that’s the way it is. You spend too much, you live too freely, you fall too hard.

“Jemma.” I say her name so sharply that she abruptly stops screaming.

All three girls look at me. Nathan looks at me. The thought comes: Only I can save us now.

I don’t even know how I know, but it’s the same thing that makes a little girl pick up a plastic doll and rock it and hug it.

Something somewhere inside me comes to life. I can do this. I know how to do this. I will rock us. Hug us. Love us. Things are just things. We are more than the sum of our things.

“We are not dying,” I say crisply. “We are just moving to a smaller house. And we are going to be okay. It might not seem like it now. And it might not seem like it for a while. But we will be. We will. And that’s all I”—I pause, look at Nathan, who has tears in his eyes—“I have to say.”

After cutting me a check to get us through the next couple of weeks, Nathan stuffs the bills into his briefcase, and with the girls crying in the backseat, I drive him back to the airport for his Northwest Airlines flight to Omaha, connecting through Minneapolis. It’s going to be another long night of no sleep on yet another red-eye for him, while I lie awake until nearly one-thirty, staring at the lamp on the table next to the bed.

Telling the girls we had to sell the house was worse than I’d imagined. I had thought they’d cry, but Jemma’s reaction shocked me.

But what else do we do? File Chapter 13? Declare bankruptcy? My stomach turns over as I think the thought. The word bankruptcy is so horr

ible, it tastes like sour milk in my mouth.

It could save the house.

Everyone would know.

If we lose the house, everyone will know.

Either way, everyone will know. Everything.

I pull my pillow over my head and scream. I feel like my guts are being wrenched out one by one.

Chapter Thirteen

The bedside alarm keeps going off, and I just keep hitting snooze.

I can’t get out of bed. Can’t face the day. Can’t face me. Can’t face reality.

Five more minutes, I think, hitting snooze yet again and rolling over, burying my face in the pillow.