Page 14 of The Wives of Hawthorne Lane
Lucas looks at her curiously as she practically leaps off the couch, but fortunately his mother’s awkward fumbling isn’t enough to hold his adolescent interest for more than a second. “Cool. Later.”
The two boys settle onto the couch and the sound of sportscasters narrating a soccer game fills the house as Libby trots up the stairs.
She gets herself ready for bed, brushing her teeth, washing her face. What the hell was she thinking? If Lucas had caught her internet-stalking his father’s girlfriend, it would have been mortifying. He might not know Heather yet, but he could soon. (The very thought makes nausea churn in her stomach once again.) What if Lucas put the pieces together? What if he said something about it to Bill?
Libby slides under her comforter, tucks the corner under her cheek, and turns her back to the cold, empty side of the bed that once belonged to Bill. She can’t let herself get carried away like that again.
11
Maggie
Benton Avenue
Maggie Tucker’s feet ache as she stands outside her front door. It’s been a long day, but as she’s about to lift her hand to turn the knob, something stops her. She takes a moment, breathing in the thick muggy air. It smells of exhaust and engine oil from the chop shop on the corner. Dean assured her that she’d get used to it, that she’d eventually stop noticing it. But she’s lived with him on Benton Avenue for nearly three years now, and she still smells it as strongly as ever. Maggie feels as though she can’t escape it. The scent of grease and grime that clings to her clothing, following her wherever she goes. She hates that it’s become a part of her. That even when she’s working, nannying for the wealthy family on the other side of town—when she’s cooking in their beautiful, pristine kitchen or strolling around the cul-de-sac with their polished, well-mannered children—she feels dirty. But this is her home, and she knows that she has to go inside eventually.
Maggie pushes open the door and slips off her work shoes, her feet throbbing as she wiggles her stockinged toes against the threadbare carpeting. Dean is already home. She knows this before she sees him by the stale scent of beer that lingers in the air, by the brown bottles lined up on the tiny kitchen table. She hates that he’s been drinking so much. She’s learned to gauge his moods by the number of empty bottles in the garbage can, and lately, they’ve been accumulating more quickly than Maggie would like. Her husband’s temperament is a mercurial one. Some days she comes home to find theman she married, that charming smile, his eyes sparkling, so devastatingly handsome as he bounces around the house like a rubber ball, patching a hole in the wall here, fixing a leaking faucet there. But other days, she’ll find the curtains drawn, the house dark and dank with the tangy odor of sweat, Dean sprawled on the couch, empty bottles lying on their sides, dropped haphazardly on the carpet beside him.
Today seems to be something of a middle ground: She can tell he’s been drinking, but he’s not passed out in the living room, and sunlight is doing its best to stream through the windows, which are clouded with the ever-present dirt that has settled on their lives. These are the hardest days, she finds, the days where she doesn’t know what to expect.
“Mags?” he calls.
“Yes,” she replies. “In here.”
She can hear his footsteps as he treads down the narrow hallway, and in a moment he appears in their living room. Maggie watches him curiously, trying to read his mood.
Dean stretches, lifting his arms over his head. His black T-shirt rises with the effort, revealing a strip of his toned stomach, a trail of hair that disappears into the waistband of the jeans that ride low on his hips. They’re stained with grease from the mechanic shop he works at, as are the tips of his fingers, the beds of his nails. No matter how hard Dean scrubs, Maggie knows it won’t come off. The black stains are a part of him.
“What’s for dinner?” he asks.
“I thought I’d cut up some of the leftover chicken from last night. Maybe make some pasta to go with it.”
Dean grumbles, but he grabs another beer from the refrigerator without objection and pops the cap off. Maggie watches as it rolls under the table, but Dean makes no effort to retrieve it.
Maggie lifts her sauce pot from the lower cabinet, feeling the waistband of her work pants cutting into the bones of her hips as she bends. She’d like to change, but she knows that she should get Dean’s dinner started first. She fills the pot from the tap.
“How was your day?” she asks, her back to Dean.
“You wouldn’t believe these people, Mags.”
She knows where this is headed. Dean works at an upscale auto shop. He loved it at first, getting to work on cars he’d otherwise only be able to dream of sitting in. But he soon started to resent the people who owned them. He’d once had larger ambitions for himself—owning his own shop, wearing a suit, being the kind of man his customers would see as an equal. But it was a pipe dream for him, something, Maggie has come to suspect, Dean will never accomplish. He’s far too foolish with his money, squandering it on booze and gambling. He’s no closer to being able to afford his own shop now than he was the day she met him.
She sprinkles some salt into the heating water, encouraging it to boil. She’s beginning to get a feel for the turning tides of Dean’s mood, sensing that anything she says today will likely be the wrong thing, and so she says nothing. She watches the pot as she waits for him to continue.
“Who the fuck do they think they are, ya know? Had this one guy today, with his fuckin’ Porsche, telling me he took pictures of it from every angle before he brought it in, and if I so much as look at his car the wrong way, he’s going to know about it.”
Maggie nods as she adds the pasta to the now boiling water.
“Don’t worry, though,” Dean continues. “He got what was coming to him.”
He pauses, and Maggie knows he’s waiting for her to respond, that he wants to know he has her full attention. She turns to face her husband, watching as a serpentine grin snakes its way across his face.
“What did you do?” she asks, because she knows he wants her to.
“Nothing the fucker didn’t deserve. Loosened a spark plug a little. It’ll mess with his engine over time. And since this guy knows fuck-all about his fancy car, he probably won’t figure it out until he needs some pretty expensive repairs.”
“Wow,” Maggie says, though the thought makes her feel uneasy. She doesn’t know when Dean became this person. Vindictive. Mean. When they first met, he’d been so sweet, so charming.
Maggie had been waiting tables at a diner then. It wasn’t a popular place—a greasy spoon where she always seemed to get the worstshifts, late nights bleeding into early mornings. The people who came in were mostly vagrants or street kids who wanted something cheap that would keep their stomachs full. Maggie hardly got any tips, and the pay was abysmal, but it was the only job she’d been able to find. And then one night, Dean walked in, sat himself in her section. She still remembers the way her stomach flipped when she saw him: the dark swoop of his hair, his dazzling smile, his black leather jacket pulled over a white T-shirt.
