Lisa Unger - Under My Skin

“How do you bear up under these conditions? It’s miserable.”

“Mom, please,” says Izzy. She walks over to her mother, picks a carrot out of the salad and starts to munch. “I’m just not musical .”

“It’s good for you, sweetie,” says Layla easily. She pushes a strand of stray hair from Izzy’s eyes. “To do something you’re not great at immediately. To work for something.”

“That’s— ridiculous .”

The teenager, so like her mother, blond with startling jewel-green eyes, casts me a pleading look. “Isn’t that ridiculous ?”

Savory aromas waft from the oven and range top, making my stomach rumble. I used to cook, too. Jack and I both loved being in the kitchen. Lately, when I’m not here, I survive on a diet of salad bar offerings and maybe Chinese takeout when I’m feeling ambitious. I help Izzy get the water.

At the table, I let the chaos wash over me—Izzy going on about some mean-girl drama, Slade begging to add a robotics club to his already packed schedule. All the heaviness, the strangeness of my day lifts for a moment.

But my inner life is a roller coaster. I think: this is the life Jack and I could have had; maybe not the insane wealth—but the chattering kids and the food on the stove and the homework. The happy mess of it all; it could have been ours. And then the ugly rise of anger; we were robbed of this. I stare at the water in my glass. Followed then by the stomach-dropping plummet of despair: What is there when I leave here? A dark apartment, void of him and the life we were building.

Layla’s hand on mine. The kids are looking at me.

“Poppy?” she says softly. “Where did you go?”

“Nowhere,” I say. “Sorry.”

A ringing device causes Layla to rise from the table. I hear the electronic swoop as she answers.

“Wait, don’t tell me,” she says. “You’re going to be late. I shouldn’t wait up.”

Her tone is light, but there’s an edge to it, too.

“There’s just a lot going on right now.” Mac on speaker apparently. No—FaceTime. She comes to the table with her iPad, sits back down beside me. Even on the screen I can see the circles under his eyes. He rubs at his bald head, his tie loose and the top button on his shirt open. “You know that, honey.”

Layla softens, smiles at the screen. “I know. We just miss you.”

“Hi, Mac,” I say.

“Hi, Dad,” the kids chorus.

“Hey, guys.”

“Poppy’s my husband now,” says Layla. She tosses me a smile. “She’s in your place.”

“I hope you two will be very happy together,” says Mac with a light laugh. “Poppy, good luck.”

I blow him a kiss.

“Izzy, sweetie, how did you do on your calculus test?” he asks.

Layla passes her the iPad.

“I’m confident,” she says, covering her mouth, still chewing. These kids, all confidence, no worries. When did that happen? What happened to teen angst? I used to lie in bed at night worrying—about grades, about friend drama, about everything .

“Did you check your work?” he asks.

More chewing. “Uh-huh,” she says. “I got this, Dad.”

Izzy hands the iPad to Slade. “Dad, this is the last week to sign up for robotics.”

“What did your mother say?”

“She said not unless my grades come up.” Slade casts a sad-eyed look at his mom, which she ignores.

“Then that’s the decision.”

Is it fatigue that makes his voice sound that way, flat, distant? Or the crush of it all—work and family, marriage, pretty from the outside, exhausting from the inside.

Slade, still undeterred, launches in about how by the time he can prove he’ll get his grades up, it will be too late. They go back and forth for a few minutes.

“FaceTime parenting,” whispers Layla. I don’t like her flat tone, either, or the kind of sad distance I see on her face; it’s new. “It’s all the rage.”

“You okay?”

She puts on a smile, but looks down at her plate. “Yeah,” she says, false bright. “Yeah, of course. Just—tired.”

I catch Izzy watching us with a worried frown.

“Dad says what if I sign up for robotics and quit if my grades don’t come up?” Slade cuts in.

Layla looks to the screen, annoyed. But the iPad is dark; Mac is gone.

“Your father and I will discuss it later and give you a decision tomorrow.”

“Robotics is the future, Mom.”

Layla puts down her fork and locks Slade in a stare. “Ask me again and the answer is no.”

Everyone knows that tone; Slade falls silent and looks at his plate. The mom tone—which means you’ve reached the limit of her patience and you’re about to lose big. I take a bite of meatloaf. Wherever she got the recipe, it’s great. I’ve cleared my whole plate. I didn’t realize how hungry I was. Layla’s barely touched hers. Which I guess is why she’s a size zero.

“Okay,” he says, drawing out the word into sad defeat.

Izzy gets up, scraping the chair loudly, clearing her plate. “I promised to call Abbey.”

Somehow the mood has changed, the happy chatter died down, a stillness settling.

* * *

Layla and I settle into the white expanse of her living room—everything low and soft, the gas fireplace lit, photography books laid out on the reclaimed wood coffee table, a bottle of pinot opened between us. I want to tell her about the hooded man, but I don’t. She’ll panic, launch into fix-it mode, and I don’t need that right now.

We’ve been friends since eighth grade. But friend is such a tepid word, isn’t it? A throwaway word that can mean any level of acquaintance. What do you call someone who’s shared your whole life, who seems to know you better than you know yourself, accepts all your many flaws and weaknesses as just flubs in the fabric of who you are? The person you can call at any hour. The one who could show up at your house in the middle of the night with a body in the trunk of her car, and you’d help her bury it. Or vice versa. That’s Layla.

“Mac’s working late,” I say, tossing it out there.

She lifts her eyebrows. “That’s Mac. It’s what he does. He works.”

She seems to wear the opulence around us, slipping into it easily like a silk robe. The expensive fabrics on her body drape; her pedicured toes are pretty, white-pink squares. Her skin practically glows from regular treatments. It would be easy to think she came from wealth, that this was all she knew. But I remember how she grew up. The fingerprint bruises on the inside of her arm from one of her father’s “bad nights.” How my mother used to pack extra food in my lunch box in case Layla came to school without and with no money to buy anything. We don’t talk about it much anymore, the abuse, the neglect. Ancient history, Layla says.

“It’s easier I think,” she says, looking down into her glass. “For him. To be at work than here with us. It’s messy at home, you know. Lots of noise, emotions, ups and downs—family, life. Numbers sit in tidy columns. You add them up and it all makes sense.”

When Jack and I first started the agency, Mac helped figure out the finances.

One night, he came to our apartment after work, and sat at our kitchen table covered with a swath of spreadsheets and documents. Layla and I grew bored, drifted away from the table. But the boys stayed up late talking about pension plans and salaries, quarterly taxes, insurance costs.

Layla and I opened a bottle of wine, lay on the couch listening to their voices, low and serious.

“Are you sure this is what you guys want?” she asked that night.

“The agency?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Won’t you miss it? The assignments, the travel, you know—the excitement of it?”