It’s the chicken pox that makes me sure—my husband is having another affair.
I find the first blister on Annie the morning of the Goodwins’ party. She is in the bath and the window is a blue square of winter sky. The shadows of bare sycamore branches lie sharp across the white tile. Annie sits cross-legged in the tepid water. Her lips move, some secret song only for the plastic animals that bob around her. Annie won’t bathe at a temperature warmer than blood. She doesn’t like things too salty or sweet or sour, and her favorite stories are ones in which nothing happens. She is wary of extremes. I worry about her physically, my fragile second child, in a way I don’t about Callie. Annie is small for nine and people often assume she is younger. Callie worries me in other ways.
The party is the Goodwins’ January tradition. They call it their “blues banishing bash.” They’re a perky family who live next door on the left. Their two smart sons Sam and Nathan are near Callie’s age; they have interesting friends as well as great taste in wine and food and art. It’s the one occasion in the year our whole family looks forward to. We always have the best time at the Goodwins’.
Annie bends over and whispers to the rubber duck in her lap. The sight of her vulnerable spine, the dark paint-licks of hair clinging to her neck—these things make my throat close up hot.
I don’t know what it’s like for other people but love and nausea are often indistinguishable to me.
“Arms up,” I say. Annie obeys and as she does I see it: a red mark on her upper arm. I recognize it instantly. I put my hand on her forehead, on her back. Both are warm—too warm.
Annie scratches at the rash and I enclose her hand in mine. “Stop,” I say gently. “That will make it worse, my little beet.”
She makes a small sound of dismay. “I’m not a beet,” she says.
“A cauliflower, then.”
“No!”
“A rutabaga?”
“No, Mom!” But she stops scratching. She is a docile child.
I find that I am scratching my own arm in sympathy. I sometimes confuse my children’s bodies with my own.
I PUT ANNIE to bed and go to the bathroom cabinet. Here are the crowded shelves of a busy family with two children. I push aside old cough syrup, disposable razors, nail scissors, Irving’s diabetes medicine, my birth control pills, a water pick we never use, painkillers, a broken powder compact. I must clean this out when I have a minute. At the very back I find what I’m looking for: a full bottle of calamine, neck all crusted up but still good. I bought it a few months ago for Callie’s eczema.
Annie’s temperature is 101.5 and her eyes are even more unfocused than usual. I should have caught this earlier, I really should have. The stinging reflux of guilt washes over me. She scratches at her arm.
“No, sweetie,” I say. I get her mittens from the dresser, fetch duct tape from Irving’s toolbox, and fasten the mittens to her pajama-top sleeves. I give her Tylenol and cover her in calamine.
“Rob,” Irving calls up the stairs. His voice is rough with morning. “Oatmeal’s ready.” He clears his throat, coughs. “And coffee,” he adds.
I sit by Annie and let the exhaustion take me for a moment. I always find my younger daughter’s presence soothing and conducive to thought. We have been on this merry-go-round for so long, Irving and I.
I make a decision tree in my head. Then I go downstairs to break the news.
* * * CALLIE IS TALKING high and feverish in the kitchen. “And they caught him,” she says, “because of the gas station surveillance footage. That’s where he bought the cement.”
“Where did you hear that, sweetie?” Irving says with an edge in his voice. I almost feel sorry for him. Callie likes to talk about murder at breakfast. “What have you been reading?”
“Just stuff,” says Callie. “Just around. The woman was acquitted. It’s difficult to prove. They had injected him with air, just air! It causes a pulmonary em-bo-lism. Emblamism? No, embolism.”
I join Irving at the coffee maker. “Annie has chicken pox,” I say quietly. “I don’t understand how it’s possible. When was she exposed? And she’s vaccinated.”
“It’s not a hundred percent effective.” Irving’s eyes are sunk deep in dark pouches, gleaming like secrets. Last night was a bad one.
“Trust us to be in the unlucky percent,” I say.
He smiles tightly and spoons oatmeal into Callie’s bowl. Cartoon deer run around the inner rim, just above the mealy grounds. He adds four slices of strawberry and begins to pour on that sickly syrup Callie likes. I place a warning hand on his shoulder. Not too much. Callie’s body seems to refuse to tell her when she’s full. If she is not gently checked, she will eat until she is in agony, until she throws up. I can’t handle two sick children today.
Irving shrugs me off like a horse flicking away a fly and keeps pouring syrup. Irving loves sweet things but cannot have them. He stuffs his daughter with the food he longs to eat. But he’s not the one who stays up with her at night.
Callie sits at the table, watching us. She saw me trying to stop him pouring her too much syrup, I know she did. Unease bubbles up. I can never tell what Callie is thinking.
“Poor Annie,” she says, nibbling a nail. “Sad face.” A recent habit of hers, talking like those little pictures you get in a text message. I find it alternately enraging and amusing.
Irving puts the oatmeal down in front of Callie. She is large for her age, golden-skinned, with a broad angular face and fervent green eyes. When she speaks it is pinched and effortful, as if she’s being squeezed like an accordion.
“Mom can look after Annie,” Callie says. “Dad, me and you will go to the Goodwins’ on our own.” She scoops up oatmeal with her finger and puts it in her mouth, eyes on me. “Party hat, wineglass.” Irving and Callie have a little club, all their own.
Irving looks at me, one eyebrow raised. It’s the look he gave me in the bar, the first time we met. It used to make my heart beat fast and splashy. The intimacy of it. His silent question, to which only I have the answer.
“Use a spoon, please,” I say to Callie. “No, sorry, hon. We all have to stay home. You can carry the chicken pox on your clothing. There will be lots of little kids at the party and we don’t want to risk making them sick.”
“Rob,” says Irving. “Let her go.”
Irving wants to put on his party self, be the handsome science professor, raise his eyebrow at people who haven’t seen it a hundred times. Most of all he wants to be in a crowd with her, eyes meeting at a distance as they talk to other people, hands leaving moist prints on their wineglasses, the longing between them stretching across the room like fine gold wire. I’ve seen it before and will again, no doubt.
“I want to see Nathan and Sam,” Callie says.
“You can see them any time,” I say. “They’re next door.”
“Not if I break my ribs,” Callie says. “Not if I get hepatitis. Not if I drink bleach and die.”
“Callie, please. There will be babies, pregnant women, old people there. Maybe unvaccinated children. Do you want to be responsible for them getting sick? I mean it. We’re staying home. I know how fast these things spread—if even one of my fourth graders gets flu, they’re all sick within the week.”
Callie’s scream starts low in her abdomen, like the growl of a big cat. Then it rises like a launched rocket, ear-shattering. It is so loud I feel it like a punch, see it in the air like stars. Irving bends over her, speaks in her ear. Callie screams higher and higher. I meet Irving’s eyes. I allow the corner of my mouth to turn up, the merest fraction. Contradict me again, I think at him. I dare you. Tell Callie that you and she can go to the party.
He lowers his gaze and strokes Callie’s shoulder, murmuring about pancakes. Her screaming stops. It gives way to little giggles. She and Irving stare at me. The same little smile plays about both their mouths. They have the same lips. And it sets me off, even though I know it shouldn’t.
“That’s it!” I shout. “You go and clean your room. Change your sheets. Maybe that will get rid of the weird smell in there.”
Callie covers her mouth and laughs into her palm.
Callie covers her mouth and laughs into her palm. Irving gets up and starts doing dishes, like it’s nothing to do with him. I stare at the back of his head, the red place where the barber went too close, and I wish I could throw something, like he does. But I’ve got no power here.
I take Callie’s abandoned bowl of oatmeal and carry it upstairs. I put it on Annie’s rash in cooling handfuls. She puts her hot little cheek against my hand, and that helps some.
* * *
I TEXT HANNAH Goodwin, Sorry! We have a case of chicken pox. Safest to stay home. Sad face. I delete the last in irritation. Callie’s habit is catching. Have fun, come over for drinks on the deck next week. R.
I read it over carefully and replace R with Rob x. That looks normal.
* * *
“THIS WILL BE fun,” I tell Irving and Callie. “We’ll have a family day. Movies, games, Chinese food...”
Each of us has strong objections to the others’ movie choices. Following the path of least resistance we end up putting on something no one wants to watch, about a man followed around by a giant rabbit that might or might not be only in his mind. Irving sits between me and Callie, an arm around each. I check on Annie every half hour. We hear the music start next door just after eleven a.m. The laughter begins, high, excited conversation that soon builds to a feverish pitch. Once or twice there comes the sound of breaking glass. Irving turns up the volume but the movie is so stupid it can’t hold anyone’s attention.
“I’ll go to the store for oatmeal and calamine,” he says. I know what that means; I can see it in the tiny, repeated tensing of his jaw. He’ll go to the store and on the way home it will be natural to stop by the party for a drink. Just one, of course; at least that’s how it will start. I feel so angry that it’s difficult to see. Little black spots drift over my vision.
I say, “We already have oatmeal and calamine.”
“You might be infectious like Mom said,” Callie says, seriously. “You might make a little kid sick.” I feel a rare rush of love and gratitude toward her, even though I suspect it’s just because she doesn’t want to be left alone with me.