“That’s not going to happen, son.” On that point he was firmest, resolute.
I walked toward him, felt my lips quiver. “You’re going to leave Mom? Now when she’s unable to—”
“No, no, no.” He waved at me. “I’m not going to leave your mother. I’d never do that.”
“But you’re not going to stop seeing Lauren.”
He took a moment, then closed his eyes and nodded. “That’s right. I’m not. That’s my choice. It’s not yours, Simon. I’m sorry, but it’s not your decision.”
I didn’t know how to react. I could throw something, break something, but how would that help? I could punch my dad’s lights out, but how would we explain that to Mom?
Mom. The woman who gave everything to me, to both of us.
“And I think we can agree,” said my father, “that it’s better if your mother doesn’t know.”
I didn’t tell my mother. In the state she was in, a shell of her former self—sometimes lucid and alert, sometimes drifting and foggy—I kept her in the dark. I didn’t tell her, afraid that it would be the last straw, that it would devastate her. I couldn’t tell her.
I didn’t let Lauren Lemoyne wedge her way into my parents’ marriage. But I let herstaythere with my silence. I became their accomplice.
We never spoke of Lauren again after that. I commuted back and forth to Hyde Park for my freshman year at U of C, leaving Mom at home during the day with our caregiver, Edie. I never said a word when Dad had unusually late “meetings” on Saturday nights or on Christmas Eve, when his “work” kept him later than normal on a Tuesday or Thursday night. I never commented. Nor did my mother.
Did she know? Did my mother, the smartest person I’ve ever known, the sharpest legal mind—even with her stroke-addled brain, did she know what he was doing? If she did, she didn’t say. Neither did I.
And neither did my father, until that day, nearly a year later, late October of 2004, when Dad came home and burst into tears, desperate and ashamed, and admitted that he’d put Lauren’s name on the account with all the money, adding her as a signatory with full rights and access, and now all the money was gone. “She said she felt like a second fiddle,” he told me through sobs. “She just wanted to feel like something of mine was hers.”
And thatsomethinghad to be the account that held all our money?
But that’s what you do with the people you love. You trust them. You trust them until they prove you wrong. Until they betray you.
And then, you react however you’re wired to react.
—
“Happy Halloween!”
Well, turns out, it’s an exaggeration to sayeveryonein Grace Village comes out their doors at seven, at least this year, but many people do, calling out the finale to trick-or-treating.
But they’re pretty consistent with the lights. Within a second or two, virtually every light on every house goes out, the Village plunging into near complete darkness, only a few measly streetlamps at the intersections.
Not Lauren’s light, though. It’s still on. What happened? What’s going on in there?
I walk along Lathrow, on the opposite side of the street, trying to be casual, the cool-customer Barack Obama, and look to my right. Lauren’s front door is closed, the outdoor light on.
What’s going on in there?
I slow my walk, as best I can. Visibility is poor, but it works for me, cloaking me in darkness with the contrast from Lauren’s outdoor light.
I head down the street a bit, craning my head back, wondering how long I can just “casually” stroll up and down the same side of the same—
The porch light on Lauren’s house goes out, leaving the outside of her house in darkness.
Then a broad gust of light—the front door opening?—disappearing just as quickly, as Christian emerges from the canopy and walks briskly down the walkway onto the sidewalk. He heads north, the direction opposite me. He’s walking too fast. He needs to slow down, look more casual.
But that only matters if anyone notices him, and they probably won’t. Anyone like him, like me, trick-or-treating in a town that has ended trick-or-treating, would probably be heading for the exits, anyway, as they say.
I turn and head north, too, just so I can pass her house again. The house light is off. That’s good. The front door is closed. Also good. Is that door locked? Does it have a knob that locks? Hard to know. I’ve never been inside that house.
I let out a long breath as I keep walking.