The Woman Inside Read online

  Things are getting worse quickly.

  * * *

  I CAN’T REMEMBER the last time I’ve walked past the vestibule of cash machines into the desert of the bank. But when the screen on the ATM displays the same paltry amount of money in our account, I have no choice.

  The perspiring bank manager sitting opposite me looks extremely jarred by the fact that I’ve requested human intervention. I can tell that interacting with an irate woman before noon is the last thing he wants to be doing right now. He would greatly benefit from about ten milligrams of Klonopin every three hours for the rest of his sweaty days.

  Sorry, Jason, no more access to a case full of pills that I can dip into and slide across the desk to make this encounter easier. Even though the news of my firing has barely permeated, I realize that I no longer know who I am without my job. The next time someone asks me, “What do you do?” I’m not sure how I should respond. Or what I am going to tell Paul.

  While Jason struggles to find my money and avoid eye contact, I take inventory of the day so far. A pretty bank employee saunters by and chirps “good morning” so perkily that I want to trip her. Good morning, indeed. Police at our door. Fired from my job. Life savings apparently gone. Pill supply dangerously low. I’m swinging back and forth between disbelief and blinding rage.

  He clears his throat a few times before nervously confirming what I already know. His voice squeaks with each word. “Ma’am, the account balance is five thousand dollars. I’m not sure what else I can tell you.”

  Our joint account is roughly nine hundred ninety-five thousand dollars less than it should be. This news—and being referred to as “ma’am”—enrage me equally. Panic knocks hard.

  “Jason, can you explain to me how twenty years’ worth of savings has suddenly evaporated?” He flinches from the volume of my voice.

  “It looks like the cosigner has made a number of large withdrawals and transfers in the last few weeks.” He pulls anxiously at the knot in his tie.

  Paul. Whose idea it had been to open the account the day we were married. So we could one day build the house we’d been talking about since our first date. My blood pressure plummets. It doesn’t look as if Paul deserves an invite to my permanent vacation after all.

  I fight the urge to take Jason’s pathetic name placard off his desk and shove it down his fleshy throat. I don’t explain that I intended to withdraw all of said nest egg and fly away somewhere far and that he’s significantly clipped my wings.

  “I don’t accept this, Jason. How in God’s name could my husband have taken all of the money without my approving or cosigning something?!” I’m jarred by the snarl that comes out of me.

  My agitation draws some glances from Jason’s coworkers, who look relieved I didn’t end up in their care. New beads of sweat appear on his forehead and upper lip. As he clicks away on the keyboard and squints at the monitor in front of him, the meds have started to kick in. The chemicals flood my receptors and quiet the nausea and panic slightly. The key is not to flip out. I can do this.

  I edge another perfectly oblong pill from my blazer pocket and casually place it in my mouth. The saccharine chemical taste dissolving on my tongue is instantly comforting. I normally don’t take this many pills in the middle of the day. But today’s events have justified some decisions to the left of normal.

  My mind wanders and I wonder who the “anonymous tip” to HR could have come from. I’m not surprised that I have enemies at work; the question is which one of them did it. My attention transitions back to the present before I get too tangled up in that. That mystery will have to wait.

  I glance around at the wasteland that is the cubicle section of the bank. A few youngish people in starter suits sit in nearby workstations uplit by their phones. I can tell by their hand movements they are swiping away their boredom. I am trying not to scream while Jason stammers that, yes, Paul, my responsible, predictable, reliable husband has been steadily bilking our joint account. As recently as yesterday, as a matter of fact.

  As though he had an escape plan of his own.

  Jason apologizes again and offers to email me a copy of the withdrawal dates and amounts, and I nod and murmur something resembling a yes as I regain enough composure to stand. When I start to walk, I feel my legs wildly trembling with rage.

  In my car, I hear myself singing along to the radio, even though I know that can’t possibly be the appropriate response to today so far. The spring sky is as clear and expansive as I feel, and I realize it is April Fools’ Day. This would be the ultimate prank. I blink and see that I’ve pulled into our driveway with no recollection of the time in between leaving the bank and arriving home. Time is doing funny things today.

  His car isn’t in the driveway. Given the time, this is to be expected. Luckily there aren’t any other cars lying in wait either. I change my mind and back out, deciding it would be best if no one knows I’m home, round the corner, and park behind the house on a service road that stands deserted save for a few daily ride-throughs of the kids in the neighborhood.

  I walk through our back gate and close it behind me, hearing the lock catch.

  I float from the yard, unlock the back door, and beeline through the kitchen to the couch, knowing that’s where I’ll find his laptop. Duff bolts upright, happy to see me. He nuzzles my hands in the direction of the kitchen where his leash is hanging, but all I can muster is a pat on his enormous head.

  He turns his broad black-and-white back to me and collapses into a 150-pound heap at my feet, content in his uncomplicated bliss. I love him, but he has always been Paul’s dog first, and the thought of my thieving, lying husband flames up in me. I pull Duff by his collar to the back door and outside. I need to be alone while I investigate. He whimpers for a moment before a squirrel catches his next flash of attention and he’s run to the far end of the enclosure.

  Our house is simple and straightforward. The modest two-story cottage is set back from the main road on a corner plot with a white picket fence enclosing a small backyard. The fifteen-hundred-square-foot two-bedroom (one of which Paul turned into a home office), two-bath felt like a palace when we moved in ten years ago from Manhattan, leaving behind a significantly more expensive six hundred square feet.

  The days of being perpetually entangled in each other’s bodies cooled quickly after the first few years with the lack of a door and general personal space. And then came Duff, who weighed one hundred pounds by the time he turned six months, so we’d literally run out of space in our own bed.

  Duff may have been a bit of a Band-Aid puppy when we couldn’t quite decide about kids. I’d always wanted children of my own, in spite of the deep fear I had of exposing kids to any of the damage that had been done to me. My desire to have a happy family as seen on TV and in movies grew exponentially when I met Paul, and the small voice of doubt was drowned out by the one of hope.

  But, in the end, his voice became the loudest on the subject. His well-rehearsed diatribe about how children ruined perfectly good marriages and that most people just had children out of a need to fulfill their own sense of self-importance won out in the end. For better or worse, I let him take the lead on our major life decisions. But there were definitely moments when I wondered if I’d really come around to sharing his view, or if I was just afraid I’d lose him if I challenged it.

  A boozy post-brunch stroll past the neighborhood pet store and our collective love at first sight with the deceptively pint-size pup was impulsive but genuine. And co-parenting a puppy seemed like a happy compromise. Neither of us had any pets growing up, and we’d always wanted a dog. He was anointed “Duff” by Paul and would grow to nearly outweigh both of us and eat a quarter of our rent in dog food, becoming the final furry straw for leaving the city.

  Seventeen years earlier, we filled one small moving truck with the contents of our apartment, bound for Paul’s hometown of Stony Brook, Long Island,
where a family friend offered us a good deal on a newly built starter house. A five-minute walk from the water and a backyard twice the size of our apartment quickly eased the shock of being outside the city looking in. Things were great and seemed like they could only get better. How wrong we’d been about that.

  I survey the kitchen, which opens into the living room, and catch my reflection in the large gilded mirror from an estate sale years ago hanging above the fireplace. I look strung out from the day’s events, my eyes wild and puffy like I’ve been up all night crying. My brown hair looks duller than usual and my skin tone is sallow. I’ve been called beautiful, but certainly not today. I have yet to shed a tear, but I’ve never been a big crier.

  I decide that noon is a perfectly respectable time to pour myself a large glass of something alcoholic. The blurring effects of the meds are starting to wane, giving way to a lot of feelings that I have no use for at the moment. I know enough not to take any more pills for at least two hours. I refuse to accidentally overdose and give them all the satisfaction.

  We aren’t big drinkers, so the only alcohol on hand is a bottle of champagne from our last wedding anniversary. It’s a good bottle. The kind that costs upward of two hundred dollars and is reserved for extra-special occasions. Paul brought it home for our nineteenth anniversary with an armful of long-stemmed red roses and a Tiffany’s gold bangle bracelet. I hadn’t done anything for him beyond getting him a lame anniversary card at the drugstore in a dash on my way home from spin class. Embarrassed and a little ashamed, I got defensive and shut down. It was the first anniversary in at least four years that hadn’t been skipped over and unacknowledged by both of us.

  He had gone off script and it shamed me.

  He’d been affectionate and nostalgic, and I couldn’t muster any of that in myself, even to be kind to him. We’d been so hot and cold with each other since he’d lost his company, and had all but stopped having sex. I’d been taking probably more pills than I should have and my sex drive was nonexistent at that point. Where I used to feel desire and sweetness for him, I only seemed to harbor irritation. I told him I didn’t feel like having a champagne hangover and wanted to do nothing more than go to bed. He’d been aloof and said if I was going to call it a night, he might go for a drive. I didn’t think to ask him where to.

  Suddenly the changes in my dear husband in the last weeks are taking on a much more complicated bent. A thick sense of déjà vu sets in. Clues that I placed out of view in favor of my own interests are coming into focus with alarming clarity. It is remarkable how much we can obscure the glaring things into near invisibility if our will is strong enough.

  I pour the first glass and immediately gulp it down. It didn’t even occur to me to call Paul after I left the office. He’s supposed to be the person I call in times of crisis. Especially after everything that’s happened before today. The phone is right next to me, but it feels out of reach. I can’t tell him about getting fired. If I do that, the questions will start, and I know he’ll assume it is the pills. And he’d be right, but I can’t let him know that.

  I shouldn’t have ever indulged Mark’s bad behavior, but after things got so out of control that night in our bedroom, I started to allow it, and even expected him to be out of line with me. Perversely, I came to depend on his attention to keep me motivated at work and distracted from home. And there were practical, chemical motivations he had access to and provided.

  Part of me had been expecting that the whole aging-pharma-girl thing was careening toward an end. No amount of injectables could change that. But this is the worst possible time for this to happen. This isn’t just about the pocketed samples; this is about my age and competition. And my declining performance. And what I know about Mark.

  The new crop of reps was being requested by the new doctors, and my hard-earned relationships with loyal, if not sometimes inappropriate, MDs were coming to a natural end as they were retiring and being replaced by ambitious thirtysomethings out of med school. They flooded the city and surrounding suburbs with thriving practices teeming with the anxious, the apathetic, and the impotent. The younger doctors with their idealism and newly minted practices were the ones who were still green enough to take an hour out of their impossibly full days to give the young, beautiful pharma reps a piece of their time and an order of new meds to ensure return visits. My dance card has become less and less full lately.

  The champagne has brought on quite a nice buzz and I assume the position. With Paul’s laptop on mine, I take an exaggeratedly dainty swig of Veuve Clicquot, pull my hair up, and sigh, as though I’m being watched. Quite the portrait of a lady. Given our history, you would think this wouldn’t be the first time I’d spied on Paul. And technically it isn’t. Stupidly, I thought we’d moved past this, though. Amazing how quickly the trust has been replaced by something far more smoldering.

  I’m in easily. I know all of Paul’s passwords. They are always the same, my nickname or our anniversary date. I examine the photo on his desktop. It is an old one, taken in the early years of our marriage. The summer we moved to the East Village and started working in earnest to save for the life we both wanted so much, unhampered by fear or doubt. Two dumb kids with optimism about our life ahead, mad about each other. I’m mildly surprised that Paul’s chosen a picture of us. My generic ocean-backdrop wallpaper feels so hollow in comparison. I barely recognize myself. My eyes are brighter, my face smoother. I’m smiling and staring at Paul instead of the camera. He’s facing forward. He’s got a smile so big it seems to expand in real time. He hasn’t aged as much as he should have since this was taken. In this version of him, his body is more lithe and his hairline more prominent, without the smattering of gray it now has. I examine the handsome face that I’ve looked at more times than my own and recognize nothing.

  I click on his email, inhale slowly, and get ready to meet my husband again for the first time.

  two

  PAUL

  Before

  MY WIFE AND I are different types of liars. It’s one of the interesting things you learn after nearly two decades of marriage. I tend to get creative with the details. She, on the other hand, selectively omits.

  Rebecca and I came to each other with roughly the same amount of damage. I suppose that for both of us, the lying comes down to control, an attempt to manage our past by reconfiguring our present. This was explained to me as a child by the psychiatrist who was assigned to my case. I think I remember so clearly because I was desperate to make a good impression.

  “Paul, you can call me Dr. A, okay?” Her smile warms me from the inside.

  “Okay.”

  “Paul, do you understand what happened to your parents?”

  “Yes, Dr. A.”

  “You understand that it was an accident? That it wasn’t your fault?”

  “Yes, Dr. A.”

  “Paul, look at me. It was nothing you did.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay, sweetie.”

  She wore a fine silver necklace with a small sapphire pendant that looked like an heirloom and matched her eyes. I remember the way it rested against her skin, accentuating the delicate lines of her cleavage. She was kind and put me at ease.

  * * *

  WE TELL OURSELVES lots of things. Lots of pleasant, hopeful lies.

  When Rebecca and I were first married, man, were we crazy about each other. Just over the moon, two wild, wide-eyed kids. And what eyes she has. Sultry, smoky, sleepy yet savvy. I was defenseless against them. And we were hopelessly in love. It was beautiful. And stupid. And I believed then—I really believed—that we could see each other through anything. And in a way, I suppose we have.

  Rebecca and I used to make love for what seemed like days on end. I’d get swallowed up by those eyes of hers as my mouth melted into her full lips and her dark, flowing hair swept across both of our faces.

  “You love me?”

>   “Desperately, Madoo.”

  “I need you so badly.”

  “You’ve got me. You’ve got all of me.”

  “Baby, I need you to fuck me.”

  Time had a way of evaporating when we were tangled up in the sheets, or standing up in the shower, or finding creative uses for the secondhand furniture we’d accumulated. We even managed to find some kinky ways to utilize my small collection of neckties. Only when we’d pry ourselves apart in sated exhaustion did the world around us return to any semblance of order.

  * * *

  WHEN YOU’RE YOUNG and dangerous, everything is available to you. The world seems utterly gift wrapped. You have a beautiful young wife with a hot ass and a way with words that makes you feel a little weak, in a way that you can allow yourself to be. In a way that feels vulnerable, but you welcome that vulnerability. You let it in, because your relationship is solid. The bonds of marriage are impenetrable and protect you from the outside world.

  Not that you really need any protection. Everything else is going beautifully. You have a thriving contracting business. People are racing to build new houses. You can barely keep up with the number of projects you’re juggling, but when you get thrown yet another, who are you to say no? You can do it. You’re the king. You can keep all of those plates spinning. You’re even able to make the time to dig, pour, and build the basement foundation and lay in the utilities for the dream home you’re designing for that gorgeous wife of yours. The one who’s killing it at work herself. And when you lay her down, and you’re on top of her, she looks at you like she’s on top of the world. And that makes you feel as if you are. And, after all, you are. You’re it. You’re the fucking man.