didn’t even bother to tell me!”
“I didn’t want you to be jealous,” Jeremy muttered darkly.
“Should I be jealous?”
The front door slammed shut right then, and Claudia and Jeremy looked at each other in wounded silence as footsteps approached, two sets. With depressing inevitability, Lucy appeared in the doorway, her married paramour in tow. She barreled toward the refrigerator in a tight pink cocktail dress, oblivious of the fog of tension that hung in the air.
“Hi, guys! You remember Pete?” Lucy flapped a hand at the doctor, hanging back in the doorway. Pete nodded at Claudia and glanced at his watch. Jeremy resumed staring at the floor.
“Can you believe it’s ten-thirty and still eighty degrees out?” Lucy spoke into the depths of the refrigerator, her rump hanging in midair, a ripe plum ready to be picked. She withdrew a bottle of chardonnay and turned to smile at them. “I know it’s kind of late, but are you two interested in joining us for a glass of white wine? Oh—is that broken glass on the floor?”
Neither Jeremy or Claudia answered. From the doorway Pete coughed twice, a soft cry of distress.
Lucy hesitated. “Oh, no, did I interrupt something?”
“I was just getting lectured by Claudia here about my inadequacy as a human being.” Jeremy’s voice was black.
Claudia’s fists curled into tight coils of fury. “Can it, Jeremy.”
“What?” He offered a faux-innocent grin. “I’m sure our roommate would love to hear what you have to say on the subject.”
Lucy sagged, the wine bottle drooping in her grip. “Maybe Pete and I should get out of your hair—”
“Oh, no! Don’t! We love the company.” Jeremy smiled darkly. “We could build a campfire and make s’mores with some of your coconut marshmallows.”
Claudia didn’t recognize this man, this one who suddenly sounded more like the bullies of her youth than the genial boy she’d married. “Stop it, stop it now,” she hissed. “It’s not Lucy’s fault that we needed to find a roommate. Besides, this is what you want, isn’t it? You’d rather live like this”—she nodded her head at Lucy—“than sell your precious painting, isn’t that what you decided?”
“I didn’t choose this in the first place, remember? All this was your idea. You seemed to believe that buying a house would affirm the fact that you were—I don’t know, all growed up or something—as if home ownership were just something we were required to do at a certain point in our lives, God knows why, and I just went along with it, even though it was insanely expensive. I should have known better. And now I’m supposed to give up everything else that’s important or interesting in order to keep it?”
Claudia stared at him, willfully blocking out the awkward presence of the other two people in the room. “It’s better than avoiding responsibility, which is what you seem to spend your life doing.”
Pete cleared his throat. “Lucy, I’m going to head home. Maybe I’ll see you at the hospital sometime.”
“Don’t!” Lucy lurched toward him, her heels crunching in the glass. “We can just go to my room—”
“Oh, let him go.” Jeremy stood in Lucy’s path, blocking her way. “You’re better off without him. He’s only using you for sex anyway. He’s married.”
“I don’t think that’s any of your business,” Lucy said softly. She gazed bleakly over Jeremy’s shoulder toward the empty space in the doorway where Pete had just stood. From the front of the house came the click of the entry door closing.
“I don’t know why you think you can’t do better,” Jeremy said, more gently. He smashed another piece of glass underneath the heel of his tennis shoe and ground it into dust.
Claudia was baffled at the strange, antagonistic intimacy that seemed to be playing out between Jeremy and Lucy. When had this relationship formed? She was completely lost, a stranger in her own home, a home that had been taken over by this secretive passive-aggressive Peter Pan who called himself her husband and some pathetic, needy girl who was sleeping in Claudia’s own bedroom. Suddenly, she couldn’t take it anymore.
“Should I be jealous?” She found herself blurting out the question Jeremy hadn’t answered yet.
Jeremy turned to stare at her, confused. “Of Lucy?”
Claudia angrily pushed the wooden kitchen table, sending it thumping across the linoleum toward Jeremy. “I don’t know what the hell is going on here, but I can’t deal anymore. I’m done,” she said. “I’m sorry, Lucy.”
She walked unsteadily out of the room as Lucy began to weep—a frightening, keening sound—and reeled