Chapter 5 : The deed recorded at 9:00 a.m. on a Wednesday.
Odessa was at her desk at 9:02, which was why nobody in the office noticed anything. She worked for a small interior architecture firm on Bay Street — the kind of job, when she had married Julian, that Bianca had described to her bridge club as "adorable," which was Bianca's word for any work she deemed replaceable. Odessa was lead on two projects and had a certification Bianca had never once asked about, and at 9:02 she put her tote under her desk and opened her email and there was the attachment from Marisol, and she did not open it, because opening it at work was like opening a bottle in a car.
She answered her messages. She went to the 10:15. She ate half a sandwich at the 12:30 and answered two client emails and reviewed a tile sample. It was, for the first five hours of the day, a Thursday like any Thursday, and that was the day she would later point to if anyone ever asked her when she decided she would not, under any circumstances, cry in that family again. She had simply chosen to behave, all day, as if nothing had changed.
At 11:14 her phone buzzed with a text from Bianca.
Odessa opened it.
The floors are scratched.
No greeting. No punctuation line-break. No explanation of which floors, or when, or how, or whether it was Odessa's fault, but of course it was Odessa's fault and they both knew which floors.
Odessa looked at the text for a moment.
The floors are scratched.
This was how it worked. Bianca would send a sentence this size and then wait three hours for Odessa to run to apologize, and in three hours she would send another one, and in three hours after that she would call Julian, and by dinner there would be a correction in the room and Odessa would be at the table with her hands folded and Bianca would say something to the other guests about the floors like an heirloom that had been ruined by someone entering the wrong way, and Odessa would apologize, and everyone would look at her, and the correction would be complete.
Odessa typed.
I'll have the floor guy call you. What's his number.
Send.
She put the phone in her drawer and went back to the tile sample.
At 2:40 her phone buzzed again. Bianca. No number. Just a sentence.
The floor guy is no longer our floor guy.
Odessa typed.
Then I'll find one.
Send.
She put the phone in the drawer.
At 4:15 Bianca sent a third message.
Julian is very disappointed.
Odessa looked at that one for a long time. Not the floors, not the scratches, not the number she would have to track down. Julian is very disappointed. That was the whole architecture of the family in four words, and Odessa could feel it land in her chest the way it always landed, a small cold stone, because for three years she had spent every day living to hear the opposite, and every day failing, and every day apologizing for the failing in a way that made the stone colder.
She typed.
I'll handle it.
Send.
At 6:00 Julian called her and she answered, because Marisol had told her to, because there was a difference between a wife who answers and a wife who hides, and the wife who answers is the one nobody suspects.
"Did you see the text from my mother," he said.
"I did. I'll find a floor guy."
"The floor guy is going to cost three grand."
"Okay."
"We're not paying three grand for a floor you scratched."
"Okay."
"Are you listening to me."
"I'm on the highway."
"You're on the highway."
"I just left work."
A pause on his end. She could hear him leaning back in the leather chair in his office on the twelfth floor of the Ashford building, the one his father had left him, the one with the view up the harbor.
"You were supposed to stay and clean," he said.
"I did clean."
"You walked on the floors."
"I walked into my mother-in-law's apartment to do the thing you told me to do, and I did it, and I found her inventory list on the counter, and I read it, and then I put it back. That's what I was doing there while you were driving her home and texting me to sleep it off."
A pause.
"You went through her drawers," Julian said.
"I opened one drawer."
"I should have known you'd—" He stopped.
"Should have known I'd what."
Another pause. He did not finish the sentence. He never finished the sentence, because the sentence was the whole family in one line and he could hear it himself when he got close, and instead he did the thing he always did when he got close, which was pivot.
"Thanksgiving is in a week and a half," he said. "We're hosting. My mother wants it at the villa."
"We're hosting."
"My mother wants it at the villa."
"How many people."
"Nine. Your parents are not invited. My mother doesn't want to deal with that."
"Okay."
"You are going to be there."
"I know."
"You are going to be polite to my mother."
"I know."
"And you are not going to talk about the apartment."
She was passing the exact stretch of the harbor road where she had pulled over the night before to look at the grey stone building with the tall windows and the black awnings over the entrance like eyebrows. The bougainvillea was still intact on the balcony. Somebody on the fifth floor had left a light on.
"Julian," she said.
"What."
"May I ask you something."
"Make it fast."
"Whose apartment is it."
Silence.
"Whose apartment is it," she said again, calmly.
"I'm hanging up," he said, and he did.
She looked at the dark phone in her hand and then at the road in front of her and she let a small smile onto her mouth, alone in the car, and the smile stayed there all the way home.
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All 8 chapters
- 1The silence came too fast.
- 2The lawyer's name was Marisol Vega, and she had a voice that did not enjoy delivering good news in increments.
- 3The knock came at 9:20.
- 4She took a cab home because her hands were unreliable and she did not want to be in a car by herself on the harbor road with the water on one side and the lights on the other. The cab driver had a small brass Buddha on the dash and a pack
- 5The deed recorded at 9:00 a.m. on a Wednesday.
- 6Thanksgiving at the villa was set for one o'clock, and Odessa arrived at 12:48 in the ivory crepe dress — the same dress, because that was its own statement and she had decided to make it — with a green bean casserole she had not made her
- 7The first call came at 7:04 in the morning.
- 8The eight weeks passed like weather.