Beside Herself by Elizabeth Laban

Author:Elizabeth Laban [LaBan, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-10-21T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

“I’m going out tonight,” Hannah said to Joel. “I’m not sure when I’ll be back.”

“Where?” Joel asked pointedly. She looked right back at him and pursed her lips, and he lowered his eyes. She was meeting Dan at Southwark, a bar not too far from her house but one she would never think to go to, so it seemed okay. She and Dan had chatted a little through the app, but she’d decided to hold most of her questions for the date so they would have at least something to talk about.

“Just out,” she said.

Joel nodded, his head down, and walked out of the bedroom. She had to remain in her armor mode as she was thinking of it, ready to protect and defend herself. When she wasn’t looking for a date, she was surprised by how relatively normal things had become between her and Joel, except for the lack of sleep—neither of them were sleeping—and the lack of sex. But how could it be any other way? She knew she couldn’t sleep with Joel and have an affair at the same time, even though that was exactly what he had done. Well, maybe not quite. If she had the story right, he had come home after his first time with Tara for that in-between week, ten or eleven days, and he had been sick—or at least pretended to be, she thought now—and he’d slept on the couch. Then when he’d come back the second time, the affair was over. So technically, she guessed, he had not slept with her while he was sleeping with Tara.

She came down the stairs to find Joel at the kitchen table with the kids, spooning steaming meatballs onto each of their plates, and she knew exactly where he’d gotten them. Really? she wanted to say. Enough with the meatballs! Why do you think meatballs are the thing that will change my mind? And then she saw he had filled “the bowl,” as they called it, with extra sauce and placed it in the middle of the table. It was their bowl, the one they had had for their entire marriage, the one that represented pretty much everything they had been through, at least until things had gone so bad, with tons of cracks from their everyday living. She had avoided using it lately. Now she wanted to smash it. She had to get out of there.

“Why do you look so pretty, Mommy?” Lincoln asked, looking up from his meatballs. She really hadn’t done much more than not change into her pajamas before dinner and put on earrings, a few bracelets, and lipstick. That was it. Well, that and the nice blouse.

“I have a meeting,” she said as casually as she could, lifting her purse from the table next to the door.

“At night?” Lincoln asked. He was going to be a reporter one day, Hannah thought, or a lawyer, some line of work that caught people doing things they were not supposed to be doing or did not want to get caught at and then questioned them about it.

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