The Stranger
Page 22

Adam shook his head and chuckled. “Did you leave me any hot water?”
“Some.”
“Great.”
Adam normally wouldn’t shower and change, but he had time and felt oddly nervous. He showered quickly, managing to stay seconds ahead of the hot water, and shaved away the Homer Simpson five-o’clock shadow. He reached into the back of his cabinet and pulled out an aftershave he knew Corinne liked. He hadn’t worn it in a while. Why he hadn’t worn it recently, he couldn’t say. Why he had chosen to wear it tonight, he couldn’t say either.
He put on a blue shirt because Corinne used to say that blue worked with his eyes. He felt stupid about that and almost changed, but then he figured, what the hell. When he started out the bedroom door, he turned around and took a long look at this room that had been theirs for so long. The king-size bed was neatly made. There were too many pillows on it—when had people started putting so many pillows on a bed?—but he and Corinne had spent a lot of years here. A simple and insipid thought, but there you go. It was just a room, just a bed.
Yet a voice in Adam’s head couldn’t help but wonder: Depending on how this dinner went, he and Corinne might never spend another night in here together.
That was melodramatic, of course. Pure hyperbole. But if hyperbole couldn’t feel free to roam in his head, where could it roam?
The doorbell rang. No movement from the boys. There never was. They had been trained somehow to never answer the house phone (it wasn’t for them, after all) and to never answer the doorbell (it was usually a delivery guy). As soon as Adam paid and closed the door, the boys clumped down the stairs like runaway Clydesdales. The house shook but held its ground.
“Paper plates okay?” Thomas asked.
Thomas and Ryan would eat on paper plates exclusively because it meant easier cleanup, but tonight, with the parents away, it was pretty much a given that if he forced real plates on them, they’d be in the sink when he and Corinne came home. Corinne would then complain to Adam. Adam would then have to scream for the boys to come down and put their plates in the dishwasher. The boys would claim that they were just about to do it—yeah, right—but not to worry because they’d be down and do it when their show was over in five (read: fifteen) minutes. Five (read: fifteen) minutes would pass, and then Corinne would complain to Adam again about how irresponsible the boys were, and he’d shout up to them with a little more anger in his voice.
The cycles of domesticity.
“Paper plates are fine,” Adam said.
The two boys attacked the pizza as if they were rehearsing the finale of The Day of the Locust. Between bites, Ryan looked at his father curiously.
“What?” Adam said.
Ryan managed to swallow. “I thought you were just going to Janice’s for dinner.”
“We are.”
“So what’s with the getup?”
“It isn’t a getup.”
“And what’s the smell?” Thomas added.
“Are you wearing cologne?”
“Eeew. It’s ruining the taste of the pizza.”
“Knock it off,” Adam said.
“Want to trade a slice of pepperoni for a slice of buffalo chicken?”
“No.”
“Come on, just one slice.”
“Throw in a mozzarella stick.”
“No way. Half a mozzarella stick.”
Adam started for the door as the negotiations wore down. “We won’t be late. Get your homework done, and please stick the pizza box in the recycling, okay?”
He drove past the new hot yoga place on Franklin Avenue—by hot he meant temperature of the class, not popularity or looks—and found parking across the street from Janice’s. Five minutes early. He looked for Corinne’s car. No sign of it, but she could be parked in the back lot.
David, Janice’s son and quasi maître d’, greeted him at the door and brought him to the back table. No Corinne. Well, okay, he was here first. No big deal. Janice came out of the kitchen two minutes later. Adam rose and kissed her on the cheek.
“Where’s your wine?” Janice asked. Her bistro was BYO. Adam and Corinne always brought a bottle.
“Forgot.”
“Maybe Corinne will bring some?”
“I doubt it.”
“I can send David to Carlo Russo’s.”
Carlo Russo’s was the wine store down the street.
“That’s okay.”
“It’s no hassle. It’s quiet right now. David?” Janice turned back to Adam. “What are you having tonight?”
“Probably the veal Milanese.”
“David, get Adam and Corinne a bottle of the Paraduxx Z blend.”
David brought back the wine. Corinne still wasn’t there. David opened the bottle and poured two glasses. Corinne still wasn’t there. At seven fifteen, Adam started to get that sinking feeling in his gut. He texted Corinne. No answer. At seven thirty, Janice came over to him and asked if everything was okay. He assured her that it was, that Corinne was probably just caught up in some parent-teacher conference.
Adam stared at his phone, willing it to buzz. At 7:45 P.M., it did.
It was a text from Corinne:
MAYBE WE NEED SOME TIME APART. YOU TAKE CARE OF THE KIDS. DON’T TRY TO CONTACT ME. IT WILL BE OKAY.
Then:
JUST GIVE ME A FEW DAYS. PLEASE.
Chapter 13
Adam sent several desperate texts to try to get Corinne to reply. They included: “this isn’t the way to handle this,” “please call me,” “where are you,” “how many days,” “how can you do this to us”—stuff like that. He tried nice, mean, calm, angry.
But there was no reaction.
Was Corinne okay?
He gave Janice some lame excuse about Corinne still being stuck and having to cancel. Janice insisted that he take two veal Milanese home with him. He was going to fight it, but there seemed little point.
As he pulled onto his street, he still held out hope that Corinne had changed her mind and gone home. It was one thing to be mad at him. It was another thing to take it out on the boys. But her car wasn’t in the drive, and the first thing Ryan said to him when he opened the door was “Where’s Mom?”
“She has some work thing,” Adam said in a voice equally vague and dismissive.
“I need my home uniform.”
“So?”
“So I threw it in the wash. Do you know if Mom did the laundry?”
“No,” Adam said. “Why don’t you check the basket?”