We. The word is a knife. He means his new family, a group that doesn't include me. Dad and I have been a two-person unit since I was in middle school. Now I've suddenly been replaced by a new cast of characters, and Dad's teaching career has been exchanged for infected goat hooves and cheesemaking.
* * *
When we get backto the house, I grab my bag from the car and Harmony leads me to the "blue bedroom." I expect everything inside the room to be blue, like some weird Alice in Wonderland meets Avatar design. I'm almost disappointed to find out that the walls are painted a soft white, and the color blue is mostly relegated to accessories, like toile curtains, blue and white ginger jars and seascape paintings. The four-poster bed has a white quilt that looks handmade and is high enough off the floor that there's a step stool with a needlepoint cover sitting next to it. From the window there's a bucolic view of the back field with the goat barn in the distance. It's the kind of room you'd get at a bed and breakfast, another business they could easily start here.
I'm grateful when Harmony goes back downstairs because I've been up since five this morning and crammed into a compact car all day long. The beginning of a headache is creeping up my neck, and the bed is calling me for a nap, but I can't seem to close my eyes without seeing images of my hook-up with Dan. Huge mistake. My biggest ever. And there's nothing I can do that will truly make it right.
In hindsight, we were on a collision course for the better part of a school year. He was already a member of the Howard Worley English department when I started working there six years ago, and I always thought he was funny and good looking, in a sleep-deprived young father kind of way. This past fall, he moved into the classroom next to mine, and we started eating lunch together during our shared planning period. At the time, I didn't think our behavior was inappropriate because I never considered screwing him, but looking back on it, I wouldn't be happy if my husband got a beer with his female colleague every Friday at four o'clock. What seemed harmless at the time now felt thoughtless and shameful because it led to that fateful moment at the bar.
Ronnie had to be the one who caught us. The others might have woken up in a puddle of drool the next morning, wearing their pajamas inside out, and doubted what they'd seen, but not Ronnie. He was fairly sober and, according to his pinched expression, completely disgusted with us. Hell, I was disgusted with us, too. I motored out of that bar like my reputation was on fire. The cab ride home was a blur of nausea and humiliation as the cabbie navigated through stop-and-go traffic. I kept hoping I was having a nightmare, but no, I wasn't that lucky.
My phone chimes to signal an incoming text, and I dig through my purse to find it. Shit. My department chair Barb.
Dear Andie, How are you? Please call me when you are free. I need to discuss some work matters with you. Thank you, Barb.
Barb is sixty-two and composes text messages like she's writing them with a quill pen. My stomach cramps when I think about what work matters Barb wants to discuss. I doubt it's the new curriculum. Ronnie probably blabbed and word got ‘round to Barb that two of her underlings were screwing around. Is hooking up with a married co-worker a fireable offense or would they just strongly suggest one of us transfer to another school?
There's no way we can work next door to each other anymore. If one of us gets moved to a windowless room in the school's dank basement, it will definitely be me. Our principal strictly enforces the dress code on female students because, in his words, "It's unfair to expect male teachers to remain professional when they're looking at girls in revealing clothing." As if grown men have no control over what their dicks might do. I'll be crucified for kissing a married man, and I hate Dan for it.
I need to talk to someone about the Barb situation, and obviously I can't call Dan. That leaves Hugh to pick up the pieces of my shattered psyche. Again.
"Hey, homewrecker," Hugh says.
I'm not sure if he's referring to the fact that I kissed Dan or that I'm planning to break up my dad's relationship. It's damning that there are multiple ways to interpret my new nickname.
"I'm here, I'm alive," I say, pretending I'm calling for my daily check-in.
When Hugh moved out of our apartment a year ago, I made him promise that we would still talk every day. Considering we're best friends who have lived together since we graduated from Columbia, it felt like a divorce when he moved in with his partner Raymond. He even took our cat with him. Honestly, I didn't want to keep Norman, who had a habit of upchucking nasty furballs in places like my shoes, but I made Hugh feel a little guilty about it anyway.
"How's the farm?" Hugh asks.
The sound of running water and clanging pots in the background means he's fixing dinner while we talk. Before Hugh moved in with Raymond, he was a five-night-a-week Thai take-out addict. Now he whips up things like marinated pork tenderloin and salmon baked in foil and sends me food porn pics of his plated meals, which seems cruel and unnecessary.
"It's positively pastoral here," I say sarcastically. "It's all so surreal, seeing my dad living on a farm. What are you cooking?"
"I bet." His spoon clinks against a pot. "I'm making chicken noodle soup. Raymond has a vicious cold, and I'm nursing him back to health like the saint that I am. How is Herb?"
"Attending to an infected goat hoof, I think."
"Well, that sounds...rank. But, hey, if Herb is happy, I'm happy."
That's a dig at me. He thinks I should be happy for Dad, too. His own father is a titan of industry, the kind who snorted coke off of models' asses in the eighties, before he settled down and married Hugh's mother. When Hugh came out in college, his dad took it as an indictment of his own masculinity, and their already strained relationship ended with a bang: the sound of a door slamming in Hugh's astonished face. The following summer, Dad invited Hugh to live in our apartment, and that's when Hugh found his surrogate dad, one who truly loved him just the way he is.
"I can't imagine he'd be happy here long term. There's nothing to do. We're in the middle of nowhere."
"He's doing Renata," Hugh says.
"Stop. That's my father you're talking about, and I'm going to puke."
If it's possible to sigh in a patronizing tone, that's what Hugh does.
"When you finally find the person you want to spend your life with, you're willing to make some compromises. That's how love works."
"Hugh, you complained bitterly when Raymond wanted to cancel HBO to save money."
"That was duringBig Little Lies! And that argument nearly broke us."
"I can only imagine."
