Page 98 of The Husband Diet
‘Where’s Mr. Lowenstein?’ I demanded of him in my brisk business manner to avoid falling apart.
‘He left a couple of hours ago.’
The man shrugged as he continued to mop the floor and I remembered when I used to clean Ira’s offices for him. And do his bookkeeping.
‘Where’s Maxine?’
‘You mean his wife, Mrs. Lowenstein? They left together.’
I felt a tingling, odd sensation at the back of my head, like someone was creeping up from behind me. Julian glanced at me.
‘Why are you here so early?’ I asked him. ‘It’s only four thirty.’
Again, he shrugged. ‘I’ve been coming at this time for a year. When everybody’s gone.’
I felt the blood drain from my face as I tripped out of the office and into the parking lot to vomit on the tarmac. A year. They’d been together for a year. And instead of coming home to his family, he’d gone home withher. Spending at least eight hours per evening there.On topof the entire day. Ira didn’t have just a mistress. He’d been leading a double life.
Julian caught up with me and held my hair away from my face as I puked.
‘No – go away,’ I sobbed, pushing him away, but he didn’t move.
I straightened up and dashed my hand over my drenched eyes with a moan. A year. One whole year of sleeping with his secretary. No wonder he came back in the wee hours. No wonder he’d always left his dinners half-eaten. No wonder he’d built a barricade in our bed and avoided turning in for the night at the same time I did. It was easier to pretend to be asleep, easier to use the same excuse every single night, or, as he'd done, to give no excuse at all, besides the fact that I made him sick.
‘Think, Erica,’ Julian said. ‘Where could they have gone? Where does she live?’
‘It should be here, on file,’ I suggested, going back into the office to rifle through the file cabinet.
*
Maxine Moore lived on the seventh floor of a new condo in a nice area overlooking Harbor Islands. My heart was in my mouth as we rode up in the elevator, Julian opposite me. The detective and his men had taken the previous one. I looked up at him, and he squeezed my hand and kissed my forehead. He opened his mouth to say something, but the doors pinged open and we jumped out.
As expected, no one answered the door, so the detective used the search warrant he’d obtained in record time and pushed his way into Maxine’s empty apartment, and I catapulted myself in behind him, calling Maddy’s name.
The apartment echoed with its emptiness and I felt the walls closing in on me. I ran to the bathroom and hurled again.
After I’d finished and rinsed my face, I caught sight of a stack of baseball magazines on the side of the toilet and the bathtub. Old habits die hard for a baseball freak.
Hanging on the wall was a picture of Maxine and Ira, happy and in love on a beach. She was wearing Ira’s New Jersey City University shirt. I recognized it because it bore an ink stain I hadn’t been able to remove. Sothatwas where it had gone.
Steadying myself, I opened the medicine cabinet. There was a bottle of prescription vitamins – B9, to be exact. Folacin, or Folic acid. I’d taken them, as well. When I was pregnant.
And then I saw a file on the bathroom counter. She must have forgotten it in her haste to leave. It was the complete file of her pregnancy. This was her first. She was eight months along.
I sat down on the edge of the tub next to Ira’s magazines and held my head. Eight months! For eight months and more he hadn’t loved me. He’d loved someone else. Fathered anotherchild. Ira didn’t even love his own family and he was starting another one? You can do that with yourknitting, or a bad book because it’s not good enough to hold your interest, because it bores you. You can put it down and start something new. There’s nothing wrong with that. But you couldn’t put a family away in the drawer when you tired of it.
On shaky legs, I returned to the living room, where Julian was waiting for me.
‘Are you alright?’ he asked.
I shook my head and handed him the folder. He went pale as he read.
I opened the front door to leave Maxine’s apartment, wanting to throw myself off her balcony instead. ‘Tell the detective to call his men off the airports. She won’t be flying,’ I said over my shoulder on my way out, but the detective followed me into the corridor.
‘Mrs. Lowenstein?’ came Detective Roker’s voice.
I turned to see him holding another folder as he beckoned us in again.
‘Were you aware of any family funds missing from your joint account?’ he asked softly.
