Lauren Takes Leave (36 page)

Doug and the officer are both standing, and I instantly
wish I was, too, so that they wouldn’t have this advantage of height over me. Doug
begins speaking and comes over to sit near me, which is a nice touch, a showing
of solidarity. “When you didn’t show up for work today, Lauren, Martha
Carrington over at the middle school called me at work
again
.”

“Buh—” I begin. Doug holds up a finger to silence me. It
works. Especially since I wasn’t sure what I was going to say after the “but.”

“But,” he says, looking from me to the officer and back
again, “as I told her many times, you have been sequestered for the week by the
Alden County Courthouse and were expected to be released from your case
tomorrow.” His mouth is saying the words but his eyes are telling me that he
knows this to be complete bullshit. There are some perks to a twelve-year
marriage, and speaking volumes without actually talking is one of them.

“Yeah, buh—” I try again. The finger goes up, my mouth
shuts.

The officer steps in now, to continue telling the story.
“But Mrs. Carrington, working off her own information, seemed to believe that
you had been released from jury duty several days ago, and that, since that
time, there may have been some foul play involved in your more recent
disappearance.”

Martha gave me up to the feds!

I am quite certain now that I will never ever get the
position of English chair.

Doug is looking down at his hands as the officer speaks,
so I can no longer read his expression.

“Further, this Mrs. Carrington felt that your husband knew
of your whereabouts but was covering up the real story with falsehoods.”

Oh, and Lauren? Say hi to Jodi and Kat for me.

How can I make my face look completely startled by this
revelation? I make my eyes wide and fake a gasp, which seems a bit too false,
even to my own ears.

The policeman takes my outburst for an authentic bit of
emotion. “I know, I know,” he says. “It seemed farfetched to me, too.”

I smile, and shrug it off as if to say,
What a crazy
world we live in, right?
Feeling better, I stand and shake his hand before
leading him out of the house. “Well, thanks so much for coming, officer…” I
say.

“But then…” he says. My right hand meets his extended left
hand, and I realize there’s a folded piece of paper in it. He shakes it to let
me know I should take it.

I open the tri-folded white page to find an exact copy of
my jury duty release form, signed and dated on Tuesday. The officer clears his
throat. “I decided to just call the courthouse and ask about your role as a
juror. Turns out, Mrs. Carrington was correct; you were released on Tuesday.
And it only took me about five minutes to clear that piece up!”

Well, doesn’t he seem awfully proud of himself for getting
off his ass and making a phone call.

“Oh yeah, that,” I say, completely busted.

I need to sit. I hold my hands up to my eyes and try and
push back the tears that are forming. I don’t want to cry because of Martha. I
must not let this officer see me break down. I remind myself that these are
tears of anger, not sadness, and that helps me get a grip.

I’m angry for getting caught like this, and I feel like a
complete fool for thinking I could just get away with such a stupid scheme in
the first place. But mostly, I wish I didn’t feel like I had to lie to Doug
throughout this whole adventure, first to get down to Miami and now again upon
returning.

I wish I could have seen some other way to get what I
wanted without sneaking behind Doug’s back. Because that’s really what was
corrupt about this unorthodox vacation choice of mine, the lying to Doug part.
Not the cutting-school part; I see that now.

No. My inability to share my plans—and worse, my feelings—with
my spouse is the real crime in my leave of absence.

I worry that my marriage will just crumble before my eyes,
a house of cards collapsing, and yet I can’t see any way to hold it all together.

Doug and the officer continue talking as I try to collect
myself. Doug leads the policeman into the kitchen and I wonder, is he offering
him coffee
now?
But then I hear their footsteps on the stairs and wonder
if he’s giving a house tour.

I mean, we’ll probably get divorced and have to sell the
house, but it seems a bit premature to show it off for sale at this very
moment, doesn’t it? What kind of a cold husband offers up the family home
before the divorce papers have even been drawn up, I ask you?

I look around the living room as if I’m seeing it for the
last time, and think,
I wish I had spent more time here with the children
.
I love my home and, even though they sometimes drive me crazy, I love Ben and
Becca. I feel safe here, in this warm family room that Doug and I created for
our little family. For a moment, I have trouble remembering why I felt I had to
run away.

The longer Doug and the officer are gone, the more I
wonder what type of trouble I’m in with the police. Am I about to be charged with
child abandonment, for leaving the kids with Laney? Or is he here to arrest me
for a work-related crime? Do people get thrown in jail for leaving an
uninspiring substitute teacher in charge of their English class for more than
three days? It seems unlikely, although, based on my experiences over the past
few days, I’d be hard pressed to say that anything is really unlikely anymore.

I imagine I’ll be arrested any minute now, as soon as the
officer is done looking in my walk-in closet or whatever he’s doing. I hope
Doug remembers to tell him that we’ve got central air now, too. That’s a nice
selling point. Then I mentally slap myself back to reality. Tears roll down my
face, regret mixed with humiliation and fear. I wonder how long I’ll be locked
up and what my sentence will be: community service? Or something real, like a
few months in one of those country club–like women’s facilities in Bedford?
Maybe I can plea insanity and get placed in an outpatient psychiatry program,
with other upstanding citizens: moms, wives, and teachers who just went off the
edge one day like I did, and only looked back after it was too late.

Although, I’ve got to say, I’m not feeling all that much
regret right now. What did I really do wrong? I mean, sure, I lied to my
employer and my family. I drank a lot of alcohol and peed in someone’s bushes
after gouging her face with my heel. I got on a plane and hung out with a bunch
of cool people, famous, infamous, and non-famous alike. I kissed a man who is
not my husband, after watching him do the worm. I got a tattoo and danced on a
parade float.

Instead of acting forty, I acted like a college freshman
on her first spring break.

But! I also helped some friends in need. Kat was going off
the deep end with the psychic hotline. After kissing Shay Greene, she needed to
vacay pronto, and thanks to me, that was possible. And when Jodi’s grandmother
died, who was there to make sure the body could get on the airplane in a timely
fashion? Well, Tim Cubix did that, really. Tim Cubix
and me
.

Tim Cubix and me.

That cracks me up in like ten thousand different ways.

I can’t wait to tell Doug all about it.

Then I remember I can’t, and I feel lousy all over again.

When Doug and the policeman don’t return after about
eight minutes, I start to freak out. I wonder if Doug is trying to blackmail
the guy by showing him my meager jewelry collection, or teaching him how to
hack in to a popular pay-per-view porno website for free.

I stand up and move around the downstairs, trying to
locate where they are on the second floor. I hear murmuring above me from the
far side of the kitchen and know that they are in the office over the garage,
where we keep the computer.

Creaking on the back stairs lets me know that the men are
coming down to the kitchen. I grab a magazine from the pile of mail and pretend
to be flipping through it at the center island, casually, as they enter the
room.

“So,” I say, gathering my courage. “Do you need to take me
down to the courthouse or something? Book me on charges of abandonment or reckless
endangerment or cutting class or whatever it is you’re here for?”

Doug’s head snaps up and he looks at me with sheer
confusion. The police officer does the same. “
You
, Mrs. Worthing?”

“Yes. Me,” I say, feeling very brave, holding my chin high
in the air, like an actress playing the role of a falsely convicted death row
inmate about to be taken to the electric chair.

“Well, I can’t see why I would do that.” He laughs
uncomfortably, shifting his eyes toward Doug.

Doug shakes his head and locks his eyes on mine. “Lauren.
Martha Carrington thought you had been
murdered
. The officer came here
to question
me
.”

“
What!
” I drop the magazine. Doug’s finger moves to
silence me again, but I won’t stay quiet, not this time. “I’m not dead!”

The officer laughs. “Yes, well. I can see that.”

“Not dead
yet
,” Doug mumbles, raising his eyebrows
at me.

The officer clears his throat and looks chagrinned. “Well,
thank you for presenting me with your very alive wife, Mr. Worthing. It seems
that I won’t be needing you to come down to the station with me after all.”

I wait for him to leave, but he’s pretty rooted to the
spot. I look up, wondering what the holdup is. Then the officer looks at me.

“Mrs. Carrington was quite agitated when we spoke on the
phone yesterday. She said you had been acting erratically—calling the school
and then hanging up in the middle of a conversation, hiding your face from her
at the doctor’s office—and she feared that you were in an abusive relationship,
too fearful to reach out for help. I’ll give her a ring once I get back to the
station, but I think you should call her yourself. Once she knows the facts,
I’m sure she’ll be much relieved.”

The facts? The last thing I want Martha to know are any
and all facts.

Although she did try to, you know, save me from Doug, the
wife-beating murderer. Which is nice of her, in a completely misguided way.

The cop seems embarrassed, and I wonder exactly what Doug
was showing him upstairs. But then his words confuse me. “I just wanted to say…my
cousin Bill is trying to marry his longtime boyfriend, and, well, even though I
think it’s kinda weird for a guy to marry another guy, I don’t think it’s my
place to stop him, if that’s what he wants.”

“O
kay
,” I say.

“So, I just really wanted to thank you for your hard work
in raising awareness and all that money to help support gay rights.”

I want to say,
What you talking ‘bout, Willis?
But
I catch a look from Doug that says,
Just go with it
, so I plaster a
smile on my face and nod imperceptibly. “Why, yes, of course. It’s my pleasure.”

He’s not quite through with me, yet, though. “And I was
really sad about the earthquake in Haiti. So terrible, what happened.”

“Indeed,” I say, reaching to the floor and retrieving the
magazine I had dropped, my thumb pressed into a cover shoot of Ruby Richmond.
“May I show you the way out?” I gesture for him to follow me, and we exit the
kitchen together and head down the hall toward the still-open front door.

The officer turns to me one last time. “So, when you get
that autograph for me of Mr. Cubix and Ms. Richmond, could you just make sure
the inscription reads:
Look who’s dead now
? It’s my favorite quote, from
Black Dawn Redux
.”

I swallow my surprise. “Absolutely!” I chirp. “They will
be just delighted to do that for you, officer!”

Then I close the door behind me with my full weight and
turn, sighing with relief.

Doug is already there, standing in the hallway, which
makes me jump with surprise. He does not look happy.

“You left a paper trail a mile high, Lauren. Every time
you bought something and charged it to our Visa card, I knew where you were and
what you were doing, okay? Lunch on the beach at the Loews Hotel, Miami? Drinks
at the Clevelander? No big mystery. Not to mention, you wouldn’t be able to use
your cell phone all week long if you were really sequestered! Now, do you mind
telling me what the fuck is going on?”

My mouth is wide open and I’m really, really, really
thinking about spilling my guts and telling Doug the whole truth and nothing
but, till death do us part or whatever, when the door opens and my kids sort of
tumble inside with Laney.

“Hi!” I cry out, staring into Ben’s and Becca’s round,
blue eyes, both smaller versions of my own. I grab Ben and hug him to me. “I
missed you guys so much!”

“Mom!” he shouts. “You’re back!”

Becca joins the chant. “Ma! Ma!”

“You got taller,” I tell him, letting him go and measuring
him against my torso. He beams with pride. Then I pick up Becca. She smells
like sugar and Play-Doh and is even pudgier than I remember her being on
Wednesday.

Nothing makes me love my children more than being away
from them for two days.

“Ah! You are home!” Laney sighs, looking totally wiped
out. Her hair has leaves in it and has been pulled out of its ponytail, into a
sort of rat’s-nest halo. Although there are bags under her eyes, she looks
completely delighted to see me, and immediately begins handing off the children
like batons at a relay race. She props open the door with one foot, afraid that
if it closes, she might never be allowed to leave.

“Becca ate some Doritos at the park. She needs a bath
tonight because she didn’t get one yesterday, and she has some paint stuck in
her hair. See?” Laney points to the offending bits of blue, then inhales in
order to finish the rest of her diatribe. “Ben is hungry and ready for dinner
now,
and also he needs some help with his spelling because he has a test tomorrow.
Becca’s teacher called and said she has been bullying some of the boys on the
playground. Bye!” She waves, grabbing her giant pocketbook, which probably has
something of mine stuffed deep inside.