About a year after Lily was born, Jake was pretty sure that Rachel was having an affair. He never had proof, but he wasn't sure he wanted any, even though sometimes he sat for an hour wondering what kind of invertebrate doormat would suspect his wife of cheating and do nothing about it. But then, he spent a lot of time convincing himself it wasn't true. They had run into the guy, brown-shirt Douglas, at the library once and another time when Jake and Rachel and Douglas were all chaperoning a dance in the high school cafeteria, and both times Rachel had blushed and stopped breathing until Douglas walked away, brushing microscopic crumbs from his pressed brown shirt. It was always, short-sleeved or long, silk or cotton or rayon or flannel, collared or v-necked, always a brown shirt of the exact same shade as all his other shirts, as though he'd dumped all of them in a bathtub of potato-brown dye. Rachel watched him walking away, and while she stood catching her breath, her husband stood beside her, a milky vinegar taste rising from his throat.
Rachel knew Douglas from her job at the gym, where they'd been chums until Rachel found out she was pregnant and quit. After that, she always talked about how happy she was to be staying home with Lily, but how much she missed her job. Since then, she would tell him from time to time that she was going to lunch with friends from work or on an all-day shopping trip, and he never asked questions.
Instead, he went to work and came home without ever checking the numbers on the caller ID or signing onto his wife's email account. Instead, when she rolled away from him at night, he thought of her red-faced and breathless at the high school dance until he couldn't focus his mind anywhere else, but he never said a word.
Jake played in the floor with his daughter, pressing the buttons on her noisy toys to see the amazed look on her face and making her stuffed animals attack her until she giggled. "I'm doing this for you," he said. "Whatever happens, you'll have two parents, and you'll never have to choose between them."
Rachel came home from a shopping trip one day about six months later. Her hair was five inches shorter than it had been when she left. It still hung past her shoulders, but the change was startling, even more so because she hadn't prepared him or asked his opinion as she usually did. She looked younger and lighter and healthier, and Jake wondered if it was the haircut or something else that had made such a difference. It hadn't been him, surely. He hadn't done anything romantic in months. Every time he tried to plan a weekend away or a nice diner, he imagined her standing near Douglas in the library, so flushed she looked sunburned.
It was this youthful new version of his wife that convinced Jake. For most of a year, he had blocked himself off from any possibility of discovering her adultery, but whether he acted on the information or not, he had to know.
With hesitation at first, Jake checked Rachel's dirty clothes, her bureau and closet, her desk, her computer, and her car, but he found nothing. He followed her one Saturday afternoon, but she went where she said she was going, to visit one of her C friends from college who had just bought a house across town. He followed her the next weekend, a shopping weekend, but she met a red-haired woman with a hug, and they rode together in Rachel's car to the mall, where they stayed for four hours. Jake watched her car from across the street at a McDonald's so Lily could play on the playground while they waited. Eventually, the two women returned to the car slowly, each weighed down with bags in each hand that bounced off their thighs as they walked.
He'd been stupid. Sitting at a red plastic table in a yellow plastic chair for four hours was proof enough of that.
Afterward, Jake decided to not to think about Douglas anymore. So Doug made Jake's wife shiver. It happens. Maybe Jake made someone else's wife shiver without even knowing it. Maybe whole hordes of women were shivering every day in his presence. Maybe Elspeth Mader was shivering over him right now. Maybe it was just a passing thing, what Rachel was feeling. Maybe she wouldn't leave him.
Jake took his socks into the living room and sat across from his father. "Since you're here, I could use your help getting community service hours out of the way. I'd like to have it done before school starts.��
"I'm sorry I wasn't there," Zeus said.
Jake looked up, pausing in the middle of wiggling his toes, enjoying the warmth and softness. "What?"
"At your trial. If I'd known—"
"You would've been there. I know."
Zeus nodded. "Okay, let's see. Two hundred hours of community service, right? I'll talk to my secretary later. I'm sure she has a list of good community service projects."
E. E. came through the front door with a box of doughnuts as Zeus was talking. "You can proofread some of my stuff for service hours." He opened the box and set it on the table.
Jake leaned forward and looked inside. Lined up one after the other, the doughnuts looked like rounded sand dunes in the distance. He took a chocolate-covered in one hand and a raspberry-filled in the other. Between bites, he said, "Is that allowed?"
"Yeah," said Zeus. "You could probably proofread and tutor to get rid of a lot of your hours. Can't charge for it, though."
E. E. gave an evil laugh, went to his room, and emerged a minute later with a two-foot stack of papers, which he set beside the doughnut box.
"God," choked Jake. "Is that everything you've ever written?"
"No, that's just this month, minus yesterday's and today's. I'll get you the rest later."
E. E. went to the kitchen, and Zeus stared at the papers, then at Jake, then at the closed kitchen door, then back at the papers. "He used to be pretty worthless as a writer, didn't he? I mean, I never read anything, but he had writer's block for a living. And he used to be surlier, right?"
Jake said, "Yeah. But three or four months ago he met this girl—"
Zeus dropped his doughnut.
"—and since then he hasn't done anything but write and, well, spend time with her."
Zeus picked up his doughnut and examined it before taking a bite. "Have you met her?" he asked as he chewed.
"That's disgusting," Jake said, pointing at his father's open mouth. "Yeah, I met her a couple of weeks ago."
"What was she like?"
"Why?" Jake asked. Zeus had never taken much interest in E. E., beyond laughing at his jokes and taking his advice about Hephaestus.
"Just wondering," Zeus said, attempting to sound innocent.
"She's nice. Kind of plain."
"What color hair does she have?"
"I don't remember. Why does it matter?"
"Eyes, clothes, piercings—can you remember anything?" Zeus asked.
"No, I—" Jake stopped. Why couldn't he remember anything, anything at all about her? He couldn't picture her in his mind. Every time he tried, the face changed into some other face, as though his memory of her was trying to meld her with other faces. "Who is she?" he asked quietly, keeping an eye on the kitchen door.
"I have a guess, but let me see what I can find out," Zeus said.
"Is E. E. in danger? Should I keep him from seeing her?"
"No, no, don't do that. If she's safe, you'll be messing up a good thing for him. If she's not, well, then she might be dangerous, and you don't want to get into that, or get E. E. into that, unprepared."
Jake nodded, feeling a little sick. "Go," he said. "Find out what's going on. We'll worry about community service hours later."
Zeus gave his son a one-armed hug. "I'm glad you're okay," he said, then grabbed another doughnut and left.
Jake sat in the living room, thinking how disappointed E. E. would be when he learned the truth about Polly. When he went back to bed a few hours later, the photograph of Rachel, Lily, and him brought back other memories.
He remembered waking up and the grief filling his lungs before he remembered what he had to be sad about. He remembered stiff hotel sheets and the smell of the crickets rotting behind the bureau reminded him. He remembered too clearly leaving home, driving out of the neighborhood, and realizing he had nowhere to go. His world was the white brick house on Lime Street, and whatever friendships he'd had before he met Rachel had faded years ago. Peanut emailed him occasionally, but he was living in Oregon with his wife and in-laws. Jake had gotten a phone call from Sam six months ago, outlining Sam's plan to walk across the continent of Africa, but he hadn't heard anything since. Sam had probably found the least dangerous animal in Africa and provoked it until it ripped out his throat. Sam was like that.
Oregon and Africa were both inconveniently far away, as was Norway, to which Geir had returned after his physics teacher had rejected the erotic epic Geir had written her instead of studying.
Jake pressed his fingers against his temples. Everything would be fine tomorrow. He just needed a place to sleep, just for one night. His friends were out of state, his mother was dead, his father unlikely to be much help. The other teachers at Bee Caves High came to mind, but he almost laughed at the thought of calling to ask if he could sleep on one of their couches. Besides, it was summer, and he had no way to reach them because he was sure no sane high school teacher would list his number in the phone book, and he'd rather sleep in a cardboard box than show up begging at their doorsteps anyway. However, the thought of going to Elspeth Mader for comfort was momentarily appealing.
Then a Motel 3 (half as good as a Motel 6? he thought) sign lit up on a side road, and Jake patted his back pocket, realizing with relief that he'd remembered to grab his wallet.
Somehow, day-long minutes later, he found himself lying there, staring at the grimy motel ceiling and shivering, even though it was eight p.m. and still ninety-nine degrees outside. He didn't expect to sleep, of course, and hours passed before he stopped thinking about being awake and finally dropped into the pit of sleep, a part of his mind still hoping that he wouldn't dream.
It never crossed his mind, not until months had passed, that this was permanent. Jake stayed in his hotel room most of the next day, drinking tap water and pretending to watch the news. He knew Rachel was furious with him. He knew that she had been infuriated for a long time by their little immortal problem, but he figured that he would go home that evening with roses and apologize profusely. Then she would ignore him for a few days to punish him for crawling back or to punish herself for allowing it. And that would be it. Everything would be the same as it had been. They'd fought before. She'd never told him to get the fuck out of her house before, but it was just a new development in the same old fight. Jake imagined he'd be back here every few months, and after awhile, it would stop crushing his soul, and he wouldn't mind it any more than sleeping on the couch.
Later, Jake wondered if he'd shown his fear of losing her instead of hiding it, whether she would have held on to whatever last splinter of love remained for him and let him come home. But it seemed like all she had needed was to get him out. It seemed like the hard part was over for her.
He was there on the porch, holding the roses, about to say what he'd prepared to say, that he loved her and needed her and would do anything in his power to make her happy.
"No," she said, before he began.
Jake felt his hands tighten around the stems, thorns pricking his palms.
"I can't do this anymore, Jake."
Jake felt the familiar symptoms of a hang-over, but he hadn't been drinking. Rachel was speaking in soap opera dialogue. The world couldn't really be like this, where one person could make a decision this wrong alone. Someone needed to step in and tell her she was being foolish, that she should try to sound more sincere. His silence scared her, he could see, and he tried to say something, but there was no voice, no sound left.
"If you could," she stopped, pressing her lips together before starting again. "If you could be…"
He heard all the words she didn't say. Mortal. Safe. Normal.
"Then, we could talk about being together again. But I just can't take this, when every day I don't know when Lily…"
He shook his head. She shouldn't blame it on Lily. Lily had always been safe, and the Weird things had always been exciting and interesting to her. Jake was sure that's why Lily liked him so much. She identified him as something magical.
"Until then," Rachel took a step back, "it's over, Jake."
Until then, it's over. Part of him wanted to scream that it didn't make sense. But he didn't have time. The door was closing, and he was sure that if it did, he'd lose more than a wife.
"Lily," he said, desperately recovering his voice. She opened the door a little more. "I still have to see my daughter."
Rachel looked shocked. "Of course you'll still see her. God, I'm not a monster, Jake." She came forward until her feet were on the threshold. "Get an apartment and a couch for her to sleep on. She'll spend weekend after next with you."
"Next weekend," he insisted.
She looked at him for a few seconds, and Jake had the horrible feeling that she was wondering why he wanted to spend time with Lily. Why, as though there were fewer than a thousand reasons. She nodded and closed the door. He couldn't live with Lily, but Lily could come stay with him. Lily needed to be safe. Lily needed to be protected. Lily, his wife's catch-all excuse.
Jake had a moment's quiet anger before the grief bit into him again. He threw the roses on the lawn and returned to the Motel 3. That night, he cried as he hadn't cried since his first dog, Plato, died when he was seven years old.