Lily cleared her throat, dragging the words up as though with a chainfall. It would be so much easier not to say anything, but she had to know. “The other night—”
“I’m sorry, Lil.” Greg took her hand, cutting her off. “I didn’t mean to take it all out on you. Even without the bombing, work has been so bad lately.”
“You raped me.”
Greg’s mouth popped open, an expression of such complete surprise overtaking his face that Lily realized she had been right: he didn’t know. She turned away, staring out the window. They were just passing through the great stone arch of the New Canaan Country Club, and beyond, the vast greens of the golf course stretched toward the near horizon. Greg cleared his throat, and Lily knew what was coming even before he spoke.
“You’re my wife.”
Before she knew what she was doing, she laughed. Greg’s face darkened, but he didn’t know that Lily wasn’t laughing at him, but at herself. Frewell’s bullshit had worked on her too, because until the other night she had honestly believed that marriage turned men into better people, better protectors. But marriage didn’t change anyone. Lily had married a man shaped by his father, the same father who had put a hand on Lily’s ass at the wedding rehearsal dinner and asked whether he could get an early slice of the cake. Was she actually surprised, now, that this was where they had ended up? Was she even allowed to complain?
The tag, Lil, Maddy whispered, and she was right. The tag was the great equalizer. Lily couldn’t run, because no matter where she ran to, all the money in the world wouldn’t keep Greg from finding her there, and Security wouldn’t lift a finger to stop him from taking her back; they would fall all over themselves to assist one of their own.
The car pulled up at the entryway, and Lily sensed Greg’s relief at the end to the conversation. Coldness had descended on Lily now, a state of nearly frozen calculation. For the first time, she saw that she might have even bigger problems than what had happened the other night. She knew the amount of professional grief Greg was enduring about being childless; it was certainly impeding his career. But she had underestimated how desperate Greg was, how far he was willing to go. They moved through the enormous marble entryway of the club, an edifice that Lily usually admired, but now she barely saw it, her mind continuing forward on its unpleasant track. In vitro fertilization had been illegal since Lily was in grade school, but it was a booming black market among wealthy couples, who saw additional children as an easy way to earn the Frewell tax breaks. If Greg had found an in vitro doctor, would that doctor be able to tell that Lily was on contraception? Was there a way to flush the hormones out of her system somehow? She couldn’t ask the Internet; that was the sort of search that got you a visit from Security.
Why don’t you tell him you don’t want kids?
But that was no longer possible, if it ever had been. She had told Greg so, in tiny ways, for years. It was nothing he was able to hear. And if the other night had proven anything, it was that what Lily wanted wasn’t worth a damn. She would have to find a way around the in vitro doctor, just as she had always circumvented the surveillance system in her house. But at the moment she could think of nothing. All of the years of her marriage, years she had spent scrambling, trying to escape this noose … and now it seemed to be drawing tight around her neck. Lily estimated that she had less than half an inch of space left.
In the restaurant, the maître d’ led them toward their table, where Lily saw several of their friends, the Palmers and Keith Thompson, already seated. Lily didn’t enjoy the circle jerk that was lunch with Greg’s golf buddies and their wives, but their presence suddenly seemed like a godsend, infinitely better than sitting across from Greg alone. And Keith wasn’t too bad, definitely her favorite of Greg’s friends. He never leered or groped or shot veiled barbs about Lily’s failure to get pregnant. He was a hurried little man who’d risen to become president of his family’s grocery chain; his father was the chairman. At one of their dinner parties, Keith had wandered, extremely drunk, into the kitchen where Lily was organizing dessert, and they’d had a long talk, during which he confessed to Lily that he was simply waiting for his father to die. But he was only drinking water today, and his brittle smile telegraphed his displeasure at his lunch companions.
“Mayhew!”
Mark Palmer stood up and Lily saw that he was already drunk; his cheeks were rosy and he had to grab the edge of the table for balance. Michele, beside him, had her own buzz going; her eyes were dull and she merely nodded as Lily greeted her and took a chair. When Dow and Pfizer had merged, the resulting company had kept Mark and fired Michele, but Michele still had friends somewhere in the production line. She sold under-the-counter painkillers to half of New Canaan, and made a good profit. Lily’s body still ached whenever she sat down, and for a moment she considered doing a little business with Michele today, but then discarded the idea. She was hiding a terrorist in her nursery, and Greg wanted to haul her off to a back-alley doctor. Painkillers would make Lily as dull as Michele, who was her own best customer, and Lily couldn’t afford that. But they would still need to go off to the bathroom at some point, so that Lily could return Michele’s books and ask for more.
Greg ordered whisky, shooting another resentful look at Lily as the waiter walked away. She had driven him to drink, that look said. There was no introspection in Greg’s gaze; the word rape seemed to have rolled off him like water. Lily suddenly remembered a day several years ago, a weekend in college when they had driven up the coastline, not going anywhere in particular, simply cruising, Lily with her right foot stuck out the passenger-side window and Greg with his left hand on her thigh. What had happened to those two kids? Where had they gone?
Lunch was served, but Sarah and Ford did not appear, which was odd. They always lunched at the club on Sundays. Lily hadn’t seen them in church either.
“Where’s Sarah?” she finally asked Michele.
The table went quiet, and Lily realized that everyone knew something she didn’t. Michele gave her a discouraging shake of the head, and Mark quickly began to tell a story about some mix-up at work. A few minutes later Michele jerked her chin toward the lobby, and Lily stood up.
“Where are you going?”
Greg had grabbed her wrist and was looking up at her with narrowed, suspicious eyes. Lily suddenly realized that she hated her husband, hated him more than she had ever hated anyone or anything in her entire life.
“To the bathroom. With Michele.”
Greg let go, giving her arm a small jerk as he did so, and Lily stumbled away from the table. Keith Thompson stared after her with concerned eyes, and Lily wished she could tell him that it was all right, but that seemed extremely optimistic.
In the bathroom, Lily asked again, “What happened to Sarah?”
Michele paused in the act of fixing her eyeliner. “It happened three days ago. How do you not know?”
A fair question. There were no secrets in New Canaan; Lily usually knew the scandals of her neighbors before they even knew themselves. “I’ve been busy.”
“With what?”
“Nothing special. What happened?”
“Sarah’s in custody.”
“What for?”
“She tried to take out her tag.”
Lily said nothing for a moment, trying to connect this information with Sarah, who had once told Lily that her husband only used his fists because he cared so much. Of all of Lily’s friends, Sarah seemed the least likely to try something so drastic. “What happened?”