across the table toward me. “Happy Birthday.”
I’d not-so-subtly hinted to him that I wanted a pair of black riding boots. Not for riding, of course. For fashion. I’d sent him links, told him the size. This box is too small to be a pair of riding boots.
It’s a pair of quilted, ankle-high boots. Not red or even rust, but an off shade of dusty orange. They are not my size. They are hideous. I will never, ever wear them.
“You said you wanted boots,” he says, clearly pleased with his purchase. “I picked these up when I was in Chicago.”
I slide the lid closed and smile. Big and bright. “Thank you.”
Over dinner, Ross talks about work and golf and something his buddies did, the outrageous things another friend’s wife was doing, but I’m concentrating on my salad. I chase a black olive around the plate with my fork; it’s hard to catch because it has a pit in it, and I can’t dig the tines in deep enough. I don’t really even want it. I like my olives pitted. But I’ll eat it anyway, because it tastes so good, and I’ll spit the pit into the palm of my hand and be uncertain about where to put it.
“...She wants the dog,” Ross says. “Can you believe that bitch? You don’t take a man’s dog.”
This snags my attention. Lifts my head. “What?”
“She wants the dog,” Ross repeats, with a stab of his fork toward me. “Can you believe it?”
“What makes it his dog?” I know the friends he’s talking about. Kent and Jeanine Presley. We aren’t that close, though we’ve been to their house for parties. I remember the wife. She had round cheeks and a pixie cut that somehow flattered her anyway, and everything about her had made me think of ponies. Not because of the thing in my brain that turned sounds into shapes and colors into flavors, but just because sometimes people remind you of things that have nothing to do with who they actually are or what they do.
Ross stops with a bite of salad halfway to his mouth. “What?”
I’ve captured the olive, but now I really don’t want it. I rub it through a smear of dressing as though that will convince my mouth to take it, but instead of sour olive flesh and the hard pit, my mouth has words. “I said, what makes it his dog?”
“Of course it’s his dog.”
“Why isn’t it her dog, just as much?” I think of the parties we’ve gone to at their gleaming and spotless house. The hors d’oeuvres on special plates designed for just that purpose. Him at the grill outside, flipping burgers, but leaving all the rest for his wife. “I’m sure she’s the one who took care of it most of the time, anyway.”
“What difference does that make?”
I put my fork down. “Probably a lot.”
“Not to the dog,” he says.
I laugh. “But it’s not the dog who gets to decide, is it?”
“You don’t take a man’s dog,” Ross says pointedly, and stabs more salad. “You just don’t.”
“I didn’t even know they were getting divorced.” I sip water to clear the taste of the dressing from my tongue. It’s delicious, it always is, but tonight everything seems to have a bit of sour taste. “What about the kids?”
Ross shrugs, clearly more concerned about the dog than the rest of the details. “He’s letting her have the house.”
“How generous.” Not all words have color, but generous has always been a soft powder-blue. It doesn’t match the sarcasm with which I’ve imbued it.
“They’re upside down. He’ll get out of it, find something better. In this market, he can snap something up.” Ross snaps his fingers to demonstrate.
“He can afford to do that?”
Ross pauses in the steady back-and-forth of his fork from plate to mouth. “Well, yeah. She has to buy him out.”
“So then he’s not ‘letting’ her ‘keep’ the house.” I don’t know why this irritates me so much. I barely know Kent and Jeanine, and they were always more Ross’s friends than mine. “She’s paying him for it. And I’m sure she did the lion’s share of taking care of it. So he’s not letting her do anything, he’s getting out from under a debt and starting fresh.”
Ross stares. “Why shouldn’t he?”
“Does she work?”
Shrug. “Sort of. Part-time, I guess.”
“So how can she afford to buy him out of that house?” It was twice as big as ours, and in a more expensive neighborhood.
“Look, I don’t know all the details, okay? It wasn’t really my business. I guess she’s going to make payments to him or something. And forfeit her share of the retirement. Whatever, Bethie, what do you care? You don’t even like Jeanine.”
That’s not quite true. I don’t know her well enough to not like her. I wince a little at the spurs of burnt umber spiking my name the way he says it. I’ve never liked it when he calls me that, but he still does no matter how many times I ask him not to. “Why are they getting divorced?”
“People grow apart,” Ross says stiffly, in a way that tells me he knows more than he’s letting on, but won’t share it.
I let it go. I don’t really care. My stomach’s in knots, and it has nothing to do with the end of the Presleys’ marriage.
“So she’s saddled with the kids and the house and having to figure out a way to not only get back into the job market to pay for all of it, but she sacrificed her future retirement in order to do it. That’s what it comes down to in the end? Money? After how many years together, two kids...” I pause. “A dog.”
Ross doesn’t notice the layer of sarcasm I put into the word. “Money matters, Beth.”
“Only when you don’t have enough.” The words slip out of me like puffs of black smoke.
He laughs at that. Takes my hand. Strokes his thumb over the palm in the way I told him once, years ago, turned me on. It doesn’t anymore.
“You don’t have to worry about money, honey. I’ll always take care of you.” He laughs again. Making light. “Unless you leave me, of course.”
Nothing about this feels light to me. Not the birthday hitting me harder than I was expecting. Not the way my world has tipped on end and I don’t know how to stand up straight. My fingers curl inside my husband’s to squeeze his hand tight.
“What would happen then?” I ask.
Ross kisses the back of my hand, his breath warm and moist and sending a shiver through me that’s not from arousal. “Oh,” he says with a smile, to show me he’s joking, though I know him well enough to know he’s serious, “I’d make sure you get nothing.”
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