“I didn’t do it,” I hear myself say.
Vito just grunts, stares at me with his beady little eyes. His arrogance finally pisses me off. I’ve passed half a dozen lie detector tests with no one being the wiser. Like hell I’m gonna break for some thick-necked grease monkey.
I meet his gaze. I hold steady. And I can tell he can tell I’m angry, but that mostly it amuses him, and that sets me off all over again. My hands fist at my sides and I think for a second if something doesn’t give soon, I’m gonna plant my fist into his face. Or maybe not his face. Maybe the wall. Except maybe not the wall. Maybe the glass window. That will shatter my hand, and wake me up with a symphony of broken bones and sliced-up flesh. And that’s what I need: a good wake-up call to get me out of this nightmare.
Vito squints his eyes at me, then grunts and tears out the check.
“Final week’s pay,” he announces. “Take it. You’re done.”
I keep my hands fisted at my sides.
“I didn’t do it,” I say again.
Vito merely shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter. You work here, the woman had her car serviced here. This is a business, meat, not a freakshow I don’t have time for the morning wash of your dirty laundry.”
He places the check on the desk, and with one finger pushes it toward me. “Take it, don’t take it. Either way, you’re done.”
So of course I take it. I leave, hearing Vito roar at the other mechanics to get back to work, then hearing each of them start to whisper.
It’s not over, I realize then. Vito’s gonna tell them the truth, three manly men hearing for the first time they worked day in, day out with a pervert. And now a woman is missing and they’re gonna start doing some math in their heads, the kind where two plus two suddenly equals five.
They’re gonna come for me. Soon. Very soon.
I try doing some math of my own in my frantic, pulse-pounding head.
Running equals being arrested by the police, locked away for life.
Staying equals being beaten by the goon squad, probably castrated for life.
I vote for running, then realize it doesn’t matter, ’cause even with Vito’s measly check, I still don’t have the cash. Then I feel the agitation build, build, build again, until I’m nearly running down the street, crashing by some chick with floral-scented perfume, and I’m running faster with her perfume in my nose and a dozen unholy fantasies in my head and I’m not gonna make it. I’m not gonna make it.
The system’s biggest success story is about to break. Yes sirree, Bob. The kid’s gonna blow.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
You know what people want more than anything else in the world? More than love, more than money, more than peace on earth? People want to feel normal. They want to feel like their emotions, their lives, their experiences, are just like everyone else’s.
It’s what drives us all The Type-A workaholic corporate lawyer who hits the bars at eleven P.M. to bolt back Cosmos and pick up a nameless fuck, only to rise at six A.M., rinse all evidence of the night away, and garb herself in a sensible Brooks Brothers suit The respected soccer mom, famous for her homemade brownies and Martha Stewart décor, who is secretly popping her son’s Ritalin just so she can keep up. Or, of course, the highly esteemed community leader, who is secretly banging his male secretary, but still appears in front of the eleven o’clock news to tell the rest of us how we need to take more responsibility for our lives.
We don’t want to feel freakish or different or isolated. We want to feel normal We want to be just like everyone else, or at the very least, just like what some TV commercial for Viagra or Botox or debt consolidation tells us our lives should be. In our mission for normalcy, we will ignore what we must ignore. We will cover up what we must cover up. And we will disregard anything we need to disregard, just so we can hold on to our illusion of perfectly regulated bliss.
And maybe, in wanting so badly to be normal in our own way, normal Jason and I became.
So I took off for a night or two every six to nine months. Working moms need a break, right? How kind and considerate of my husband to allow me occasional “spa” breaks. So he stayed up late, hunched over the computer, typing furiously. Writers often have long and irregular hours, right? How kind and understanding of me to never complain of my husband’s demanding job.
We gave each other space. We disregarded what we needed to disregard. And in the process, we stood side by side and watched Ree careen down the sidewalk on her first tricycle. We cheered her first jump into a swimming pool. We laughed the first time she tiptoed into the freezing Atlantic Ocean and came screaming full speed back up the beach. We celebrated our daughter We worshipped every giggle, laugh, burp, and chattering word that tumbled from her mouth. We adored her innocence, her free spirit, her spunk. And maybe in loving her, we learned also to love each other
At least that’s how it felt to me.
One night, toward the end of summer, when Ree was due to start preschool in September and I would start my first gig as a student teacher, Jason and I stayed up late. He had a George Winston CD playing. Something soft and melodic. Ree and I were constantly torturing him with rock-n-roll, but he always gravitated toward classical music He would close his eyes, and enter some Zen state where I was certain he was sound asleep, only to realize he was humming softly under his breath.
Tonight, we sat on the little love seat. His left arm was thrown across the back, his fingers touching the nape of my neck and rubbing gently. He did this more and more. Light, little touches, caressing me almost absently. In the beginning, I had startled at the contact. I had learned since to sit still, not say a word. The longer I relaxed, the longer he touched me, and I enjoyed my husband’s touch. Heaven help me, I liked the feel of his calloused fingertips grazing the back of my shoulders, sifting through my hair Sometimes, he rubbed my scalp and I arched and shifted under his hand like a kitten.
Once I had tried to reciprocate, to scratch his back. The second my fingers went to lift his shirt, however, he got up and left the room. I never tried again.
A husband stroking his wife’s neck while they cuddled on the love seat, on the other hand… Welcome to our little slice of normalcy.
“Do you believe in heaven?” I asked him casually. We’d watched some Harrison Ford movie that night, where the vengeful ghost of the husband’s first wife had wreaked havoc on the household.
“Maybe.”
“I don’t.”
His fingers tugged gently on my earlobe, firm, erotic pressure. I nestled closer to him, trying not to startle him, but having a harder and harder time sitting still. Who knew ears could be such an erogenous zone? But mine were, mine were.
“Why not?” he asked me, fingers moving from my earlobe, down the side of my neck, then back up again. A husband touching his wife. A wife snuggling with her husband. Normal. All perfectly normal.
So normal that some nights when I woke up alone in my marriage bed, my heart shattered into a thousand pieces. Yet I got up the next morning and did it all over again. Sometimes, I even heard my mother’s voice in my mind, “I know something you don’t know. I know something you don’t know…”