The Idea of Him. Holly Peterson

sporting the facial expression of someone getting a lap dance. As I stared at her, she noticed, but then looked at Wade—whose back was to me—and nodded in the direction of the kitchen. She drifted down the hall. I found this strange. A woman I didn’t know was signaling to me in no uncertain terms that she was headed to my back kitchen … and what was she referring to about Wade exactly?

      “It’s all okay, right, my love?” Wade shouted over the din, relishing that he controlled every last detail of the party turf and I didn’t care to. Even more guests had poured in and filled the loft space in what felt like seconds. “I checked on Blake. He’s fine, like he forgot all about Jeremy being mean. The party—going well so far, right?”

      Yes, I mouthed without sound as I bit into a miniquiche that was warm to the touch, but cold on the inside. I took a deep breath and looked for the nineteen-year-old stoned-out server across the room so I could remind him to leave the next batch in the oven a bit longer.

      “You sure?” Wade’s eyes searched the room. They moved toward the girl in green.

      “Positive.” In that instant, with that one glance in her direction, I knew my instincts over that past year were correct and that I had to stop glossing over problems; while on the surface we were status quo, something beneath had changed for Wade. Warm on the outside, cold on the inside.

      There had been a discreet but seismic shift in his smallest gestures: he used to let his eyes linger on mine, but tonight he broke the stare so he could steal a glance at this woman. I found his telling me I was so hot all the time inauthentic because he wasn’t acting on it. He used to want to make out in our elevator, even after the kids were born, last year even. Now his compliments were more frequent, but his kisses more like bird pecks.

      “I’m going to check on the food. We seem to be running low.” Wade gave me another one of those hard-lip kisses, spun on his heel, and buzzed off after the impossibly hot woman, not even noticing me noticing him.

       6

       Bizarre Behavior

      Mouth agape in a silent scream, I searched the crowd for Caitlin, my office right hand and friend, half hoping she had, and half praying she hadn’t, witnessed my husband chase after the gorgeous girl who’d helped me at the bar of the Tudor Room. I finally caught Caitlin’s eye, and she hopscotched over Delsie’s caramel, daddy longlegs to reach me.

      “What’s wrong—other than this party, that is,” she said out of the side of her mouth. Her curly blond, 1920s bob slanted across her cheek as she smirked. “All the requisite douche bags are here. Wade must be very happy.”

      “Yeah,” I said, trying to remain calm as I watched the hallway for the return of either my husband or that woman. “He’s happy with everything.”

      Caitlin squinted at my creased brow. “But you’re not. What’s up?”

      I couldn’t stop myself. “He just disappeared down the hall with a lovely young thing who actually was very kind and generous to me during my Delsie meeting. I’m sure it’s nothing. He wouldn’t … he’s just all hyper tonight with the …”

      “Oh, he wouldn’t in his own home.” Caitlin crossed her arms. She looked intensely angry. “Aren’t the kids back that way?”

      I certainly wasn’t expecting to have my fears of a cheating husband reignited that night. When Wade strayed that one time, he claimed he was “ignored and lonely” and that he’d made a monumental mistake with a photo assistant for Meter magazine while I was breast-feeding Lucy. It almost derailed our marriage. A onetime thing, he had promised. Not a day went by that I didn’t remember my pain when I figured it out. I had heard him talking to her one night about the sexy things he wanted to do to her—whispering in the bathroom with the door slightly ajar. He didn’t realize I was home and had overheard the entire conversation. I had crumpled my mushy postpregnancy body onto the bed, waiting for the call to end. And there was nothing he could say to refute it when he saw me minutes afterward. It took me a very long time even to sit next to him on a couch.

      For months after that, he came home directly after work every night to assure me it was a “mistake” and that he understood he had nearly destroyed everything between us. I had chosen to believe that it was out of his system and in the past. Now I wasn’t so sure.

      “Hold on. I’ll be right back. I’ve got to check on the food,” I lied. Why would that woman approach me at the Tudor Room, help me, connect with me so brazenly and out of the blue if she were fooling around with Wade? She’d even just hinted a minute ago with that nod in the direction of the kitchen that they were headed together somewhere back there.

       What the hell?

      I pretended to waltz into my kitchen, no big deal, just checking on the food, and found the college server frantically filling black lacquer trays with hot-outside, frozen-inside hors d’oeuvres. No sign of Wade. “Jim. Have you seen my husband?”

      “Sorry, I’m really too busy to …” Jim shook his head, clearly exasperated trying to feed sixty people with one small oven and too few goodies coming out of it and too much pregig marijuana slowing down his executive functioning.

      The laundry room door was shut, but I could see the light under the crack. Couldn’t be. I nervously checked our back bedroom. No sign of two adults, just my two kids on our king bed, hypnotized by the television.

      “Ten more minutes and you have to get into your own bunks. I love you both!”

      My heart in pieces, I marched back to the front of the apartment to where Caitlin stood, arms on her hips, ready to help me in any way she could.

      “Where are they?” She had urged me countless times to stop letting Wade go out late so often when he’d already strayed once. “And don’t tell me you were checking on the food. I am going to help you figure this out.” She seemed almost more determined to uncover his behavior than I did, which I thought a little bizarre.

      “I think they are in the laundry room,” I said, squeezing my hands while tears pooled in my eyes. I blinked them away. “It’s the only room I haven’t checked.”

      “No way.”

      “He’s not at the party. He’s not in the kitchen. They didn’t jump out the window or tuck in the kids. It’s the only room that makes any sense—there’s a light on in there.”

      “You sure she isn’t some writer?” Caitlin asked. “Maybe she’s helping him write a toast?”

      “She’s definitely not from Meter. She’s hot enough to be on the cover. Besides, I already wrote his friggin’ toast.”

      “When are you going to stop doing that, by the way; he’s a grown man with dozens of writers at his disposal …”

      “In the laundry room, Caitlin. Where I wash his children’s clothes.”

      “If I were you, I’d try to catch him in the act.” She forced the words out of her mouth with spit flying. “We should go back there and fling that door open.”

      “Not we, me. You’re too rash; you’ll screw it up,” I said. She started to protest, but she knew what I meant. “Keep people from going into the back of the apartment. I need to sort this out myself.”

      I walked down the hall and sat on a kitchen stool while my eyes burned with humiliation over something too crazy to be true. As the student waiter took out the latest batch of crumbly phyllo hors d’oeuvres, they went sliding onto the floor.

      “The floor is clean,” I said. “Pick them up, place them on the lovely lacquer trays, and serve them to the guests, Jim.”

      “Really,