Page 47 of Breathing Under Water

As I open the refrigerator and reach for a yogurt, I hear Phil walking in from the garage.

When he rounds the corner and sees me, he stops as if he’s surprised I’m there. He’s wearing a dress shirt and slacks. On a lazy summer Saturday.

“Why are you all dressed up?” I ask, noting the French cuffs on his button-down and the perfectly tight set to his gelled hair.

“Oh, hey,” he says, quickly shoving what looks like a small paper bag from a pharmacy into his pocket.

“Did I miss the memo about an event today?”

“What? Oh.” He looks down at his clothes. “Oh, no, nothing. I just, you know, wanted to go for a drive. Didn’t want to wake you and grabbed whatever I saw first.” He’s got his hand over the pocket where he shoved the bag, as though he doesn’t want me to see through his pants and discover what’s inside. “I’ll go change though. It’s so wet out.”

But now I’ve had it. Enough wondering about the story behind my husband’s unusual behavior, enough of his sour attitude and unlikely stories. This moment, these clothes, they’re the last straw. Phil hates wearing dress clothes when he doesn’t have to and would never just haphazardly throw on any shirt that buttons. He shows up here in French cuffs at ten a.m. on a Saturday, and I’m not supposed to ask questions? Yeah, I don’t think so.

“Phillip Becker,” I say, marching over to where he’s standing and holding out my hand. “I want to see whatever’s inside your pocket.”

“Would you stop?” His voice is full of exasperation. “Why does everything have to be something bigger? I want to go shower. Would you please just leave it alone?”

As he moves around me to get out of the kitchen, my anger only grows.

“I’m not a complete idiot, Phil.”

He twists around and looks back at me.

“What does that even mean?” He doesn’t sound angry—justtired. In that single question, I hear the plea of a man who’s wondering what he has to do to make me just leave him alone.

Then all of a sudden, it hits me. It’s instantly so obvious. The pulling back from me, the overnight travel.

“I kept telling myself it couldn’t possibly be another woman, that there had to be another explanation for the way you’ve been acting. That you would never...” I take another deep breath, just to be sure. Underneath the heavy scent of coffee, it’s very definitely there. “Perfume...” I stop and shake my head in disgust. “No wonder you looked like a deer in headlights when you saw me standing here. Are you really such a cliché? Another woman?”

“An affair?” Phil nearly squeaks as he says it, as if it’s totally out of left field. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Leave it to you to get so dramatic. Can we please not make this into a thing?”

“Dramatic?” I scream back at him, forgetting to keep my voice down for Leo. “You think that’s an insult? I’m Bernice Selinger from Bay Shore! The only language I speak is drama!” I feel spit fly out of my mouth as I say it. “Stay tuned for our next segment of the Berry show, when Berry will be kicking her lousy, no-good, cheating husband out of the house!”

“I’m not cheating!”

“You want to show me what’s in your pocket then?” I ask.

He lets out a long breath and stares back at me. I notice then the dark circles under his eyes, the pallor of his complexion. For a split second I wonder if I’m wrong, if something else is going on.

“I’m not letting you play detective on me the way you do with Leo. I don’t need this right now.”

“Yeah? Well, maybe I don’t needyouright now!”

And then I storm out of the house.

Without thinking about where I’m going, I find myself driving the route to my sister’s. I’m halfway there before it occurs to me that she might not even be home. She’s probably on her way to some fabulous beach spot with friends, like Fire Island or Tobay. Or maybe she’s setting up a bridal shower in the Hamptons, or doing any number of things with her jet-setter crowd that do not include sitting at home waiting to hear about her older sister’s most recent crisis.

But I don’t have anywhere else to go, anyone else to turn to, so I just keep driving. To my relief, when I turn onto Yvonne’s street in East Setauket, I see her baby-blue Audi SUV sitting in the driveway, sparkling in the blazing sun. Behind it, her fifty-four-hundred-square-foot Craftsman-style home beckons me. In my head I hear Phil’s voice, asking for the millionth time why she would possibly need so much space just for herself. But instead of musing about the answer like I normally would, I decide Phil’s an asshole for asking. My sister can spend her hard-earned money however she damn pleases, and I am not here to judge.

When I ring the bell, it only takes a few seconds for Yvonne to answer. She’s wearing a semi-sheer, caftan-style cover-up. It’s all flowy and fabulous, and something I could never pull off. I see the shadow of a string bikini underneath, one that I’m sure displays her breasts to their best advantage. While everything about me screams “suburban mom,” Yvonne always looks like she’s waiting for some Hollywood produceror an Italian lover to come carry her off to Monaco. And who knows? Maybe she is.

When she sees me, her smile falls.

“Oh, I thought you were Shiri.” She looks me over, presumably wondering why I’ve come. Then she must notice the expression on my face. “What’s happened?”

“It’s...” I look back at my old Ford sitting in the driveway, asking myself if I could just get back in the car and drive away, maybe just keep traveling in reverse until I don’t have to say the words that are coming next. I turn back to my sister and wipe at a tear that has spilled out of my eye. “Phil and I...” I don’t even know how to finish the sentence.

She squints at me, her hand rising to the Gucci sunglasses resting on top of her head as if she’s trying to ground herself amid my chaos.