Trapped

There is the whoosh of water spraying from the shower, the insistent chime of a phone, and the dull pounding of her head. The bed that just a few days ago had been a pristine, white cloud is now a crumpled pile of distorted comforter, twisted bed sheets, and strewn pillows. Sarah risks the opening of an eye but when the brightness of the room sears her throbbing brain, she squeezes it shut again. 

Their last night of vacation and they had made the most of it. Bottles of red wine, bourbon, and, oh Jesus, had they done shots? The acrid taste of tequila and lime in the back of her throat plus the vicious roil of her stomach confirms that yes, they had indeed done shots. 

What had they been thinking? Apparently that they were still in college instead of in their forties. 

Dear God, she groans inwardly as she rolls onto her side. 

The cell phone chimes again. It must be Nick’s since she always keeps hers on silent. She opens both eyes and it’s a little easier this time, blinking to let them get used to the brightness. Edging over to Nick’s side of the bed, she reaches for his phone.   

“Shut up!” she whisper-yells toward the sound. 

She grabs the phone to turn off the ringer, but what she sees slices through her hangover like a flash of lightning. She sits up quickly, trying to ignore the way the room tilts and throbs. 

She gazes down at her husband’s phone in her lap and the slew of texts on the screen. All from someone named Muffy. 

Muffy, she thinks. Who in the holy hell is Muffy?

Sent at 1:13 am: 

So close and yet so far— the agony!! This may not have been my best idea LOL

Sarah tries mightily to push through the cottony feel of her brain and her mouth to make sense of this. What does this even mean? She doesn’t quite understand it, but she knows it’s not good. 

She doesn’t know anyone with a name even resembling Muffy. What kind of name is that anyway? She immediately thinks of a snooty woman at a country club who lunches with people named Bitsy and Trip. 

She waves the thought away.

That doesn’t even matter right now!

What matters is that some other woman is texting her husband. She looks down to read the next one. 

            Sent at 7:54 am:       

Sorry for texting last night. Let’s meet at our spot next week… I know it’s crazy but I miss u

Sarah is numb. Except she’s not.

Our spot?

Her head is pounding and her stomach is flipping and her throat is doing this weird thing that feels sort of like crying and also like choking. Her heart is beating so hard in her chest it feels like being thrown against her ribcage. It’s beating inside her stomach. In her ears. 

Nick is having an affair. She thinks these words out loud in her brain and she has to remind herself to breathe. She looks down at the last text, sent just a few minutes ago. 

            I love you, Nicky. When are we going to tell them? 

Sarah sits in a stunned silence for one heartbeat… two heartbeats… three. She feels like she has stepped into a world she does not understand. Everything feels like it’s leaning and she grabs onto the covers so she won’t fall off the bed. The leaning turns into spinning and she feels like she’s falling.

“Oh, God!” she moans and leaps off the bed, hand clamped over her mouth.

She shoves the bathroom door open, pushes past Nick who has just wrapped a towel around his waist, and falls onto her knees just in time to wretch into the toilet. After a few violent heaves, she empties the contents of her stomach and flushes the debauchery of last night down the toilet. 

“You were pretty wrecked last night, huh, Babe?” Nick snickers, helping her to her feet. 

She ignores him, blows her nose shakily, and reaches for her toothbrush. 

Just then, the phone dings again. A faint, gentle chiming, like the triangle from elementary school music class. A sound that just a few minutes ago would have seemed innocuous (it’s a text from the guys) or innocent (just another spam text) is now a grenade that has been thrown into their marriage. 

She’s relieved to see that in her flight to the bathroom, she managed to toss the phone back on his bedside table. Nick glances toward the bedroom and then back at Sarah. They hold each other’s gaze, and she wonders what he’s thinking. She never looks at his phone, always so trusting. 

But something is shifting inside of her and there is a heavy silence between them. Like the air before rain, that thick feel of storm. An impending disaster that you can sense and smell and even taste.  

“Hey, you guys!” Mallory calling from the hallway, severs the moment. “I know you’re up cuz I heard the shower— can I come in?”  

“Sure,” Sarah says, opening the door.

“Have you—oh… Sarah-girl… are you okay?” 

“Not really,” she grumbles, hoping that her face is betraying a hangover and nothing else. She’s not ready to deal with this yet, even with Mal.

I love you, Nicky.

She shuts her eyes, willing the thought from her brain. Not now, she thinks. 

“How are you so… perky?! And showered?” Sarah asks her best friend.

Mallory laughs and pulls Sarah into a hug. 

“Because I didn’t do tequila shots, Jose Cuervo.”  

Sarah groans in response. 

“So have you guys looked outside?” Mallory asks, turning Sarah toward the window. 

Of course she hasn’t looked outside, she’s been watching her marriage implode by some slut named Muffy. But taking in the backyard of their ski chalet, her eyes grow wide. 

Where there was, just yesterday, a charming slate patio with a gorgeous stone fireplace and cozy chairs, now is only white. A thick, white blanket of snow covers everything. Only the chimney of the fireplace is visible, a giant, rocky arm reaching from the depths. 

She glances down at the door and sees that the snow is piled up so high that she wonders if they can even open it. Panic crawls through her body like a vine.

Trapped.

Her heart is racing.

“Woah,” says Nick in amazement. “All that fell last night?” 

He has a look of childlike wonder on his face and her heart squeezes. Just moments ago, that look would have filled her with tenderness and love. She would have wrapped her arms around his waist and kissed his sweet face. Now she just wants to smack it. 

“What are we going to do?” Sarah asks, her voice shaking with panic or rage or heartbreak. She’s not sure which. Probably all three.

“Well, nothing today,” says Mallory. “I just got an email from the ski resort—no one is going in or out until they can clear the roads. They’re not even charging us, which is nice but also feels right.”

“So we basically have an extra day of vacation for free!” Nick says happily and he and Mallory high five. 

“I know right? Woo hoo!” Mallory cheers. “I’m going to call Barb and let her know that she gets the kids for an extra night.” 

Soft flakes continue to fall. How can something so soft and beautiful be so powerful? 

Sarah opens the fridge and pours cold water into a glass. She gulps it down in giant swallows and refills the glass immediately after. She had left the room without a glance in Nick’s direction, shutting the door hard enough to make him wonder. She isn’t going to hash this out now. 

She stands at the large, marble kitchen island and holds the cold glass to her forehead. Her thoughts are a tornado of words and half-formed thoughts. Her body is too many feelings. She is overwhelmed and forces herself to take deep breaths. 

“Had a little too much last night?” says Pete, Mallory’s husband, walking into the kitchen.

Sarah looks up and nods, not trusting her voice. 

“How about some breakfast?” he asks, kindness in his eyes as he gives her a side hug. 

“That’d be great, Obi,” Sarah says, using the nickname he got in college for his fondness for Obi-Wan Kenobi and his last name being O’Brien.

While he scrambles eggs and fries bacon, she butters toast and makes coffee. Mallory and Nick sit at the counter laughing about some drinking game that they all played last night that Sarah can barely remember. They’ve always been better at handing a wild night than Sarah. 

“What are we going to do about the weather?” Sarah asks no one. “Like, how are we getting home?” 

The thought of home tugs at something tender and swelling inside of her. What will home be like now? What will happen to them once she and Nick have a chance to talk about this. About Muffy. The longer she thinks about that name, there is something familiar about it. 

Is it someone’s nickname?

She almost impulsively asks Mal, she’s so used to running everything by her. But then realizes how ridiculous that would be. 

Hey, Mal, do we know anyone named Muffy? Because Nick is screwing her.

“I think we just have to wait and see, Babe,” Nick says. “I mean, there’s no way we can leave here today. Maybe not even tomorrow. Did you talk to your sister?” 

She bristles at the word “babe,” as if he has any right to call her that now. She wants to scream at him, slap him, punch him as hard as she can. She can feel her face reddening with the anger that is boiling just below her surface. 

“Yes,” she says curtly. “Of course I did. She’s happy to keep the girls for as long as we need her to.”

She had texted her sister instead of calling her, not trusting herself to stay quiet. She knew that as soon as she heard her sister’s voice, she would start sobbing and might never stop. Plus, Emily would probably be so thrilled that she’d call a divorce lawyer as soon as she got off the phone. She’s never liked Nick.  

“So we’re just snowed in here until… like, we don’t know when?” Sarah can hear the hysteria in her voice, but she can’t quite control it. 

“We should just make the best of it!” says Mallory. “We still have plenty of food, since we super over-bought and plenty to drink.” Then adds with a laugh, “Even though Sarah tried to drink it all last night.” 

That makes everyone laugh, even Sarah, who says, “It’s not like any of you were sober!” 

“I’m sure they’ll have the snow cleared up by tomorrow,” says Obi with a reassuring smile. “It’s Colorado after all, they know snow. Not like us southerners.” 

The conversation meanders into talk of Snowmageddon and how a few inches of snow quite literally shut down the city of Atlanta for a full day. 

Sarah finishes her breakfast and while Nick and Mallory are doing the dishes, she lies down in her room. She must have fallen asleep, because the next thing she knows, Obi is knocking on the door with a Bloody Mary in his hand. 

“A little hair of the dog?” he says with a lopsided smile. 

She sits up, stretches, and realizes that she feels better. Sturdier.

“That actually sounds good,” she says, reaching for the glass.

“Strong and spicy, just how you like it,” he says.

“Thanks,” she says. “Hey—where are Mal and Nick?” 

“They managed to get the back door open and they’re, I don’t know—building a fort or a snowman or something?” he says with a shrug. 

They share a look that needs no words. Their spouses are the fun ones, adventurous, always up for anything. She and Obi are serious, quiet, thoughtful. Boring. Although she has spent a lifetime trying not to think it. Reasoning, instead that they are a good yin yang. Opposites attract and all that. But now she wonders if that’s why Nick is texting with someone else. 

No, in love with someone else. 

Because she’s boring. 

She closes her eyes. The thought reaches deep and touches an old wound. She has always been the smart one… kind, cautious, studious. She knows that she is plain and simple compared to people like Mal and Nick, even her sister, who has always been the funny one. So she has worked hard to appreciate her gifts and not feel inferior.

And look where it’s gotten me, she thinks bitterly. 

She takes a long drink, feeling herself relax, her body and thoughts loosening. She drinks more, the cold, zesty cocktail going down easier than she imagined, and takes a long, hot shower. 

She turns the shower to scorching and lets the water hit her neck and run down her back. She thinks of sitting down with Nick, across from their three girls, and telling them that they’re getting a divorce. She thinks of sharing her daughters with freaking Muffy. She thinks of looking into Nick’s eyes when he tells her that he loves someone else. 

The thought breaks her.

She can no longer bear it and succumbs to her tears that turn into sobs that wrack her body. She leans onto the wall of the shower and slides down until she is sitting on the tiled floor next to the drain. She hugs her knees to her chest and weeps, the water mixing with her tears, rinsing her clean. 

By the time that she is dressed, she feels clearer, more settled somehow. 

Mallory and Nick are back inside, faces flushed and hair damp from the cold air and snow. Nick is making a fire and Mallory is telling them about the conversation she had with her mother-in-law when she called to tell her they’re snowed in.

“So I guess Will is running down the field and when he turns to see his grandparents on the sidelines, he stops running, waves and yells, ‘Hi Nana and Pop Pop!’ Then the ball falls out of his stick—because of course it does—and a kid from the other team picks it up and scores,” she says, while laughing hysterically and rolling her eyes.

“I can totally see it!” Obi is laughing so hard his eyes are tearing up. “That kid is not cut out for sports.”

“He’s only six and it’s the first time he’s ever played lacrosse, I’m pretty sure there’s still time,” Sarah says, laughing too, but defending her favorite of the O’Brien boys.

She is on her second Bloody Mary, and she is struck by the normalcy of the situation. Here they are, just chatting it up by the fire while her husband is having an affair.

Cool, cool, cool, she thinks, nearly laughing out loud. She feels like she might be going a little bit crazy, like someone who starts giggling inappropriately in the middle of a funeral.

“Can you imagine?” Mallory says. “My dad would have killed me if I’d stopped and waved during a game, no matter how old I was!” 

“Same here,” says Nick, laughing. “Except it was my mom and she called me Nicky—even in high school. So, there I was, captain of the football team with my mom in the stands yelling, “Go, Nicky, go!’ It was mortifying.”

“Oh, I can beat that,” says Mallory, sitting up a little straighter in her chair, eyes bright. “My dad’s nickname for me was Muffin that turned into Muffy, so while he’s screaming from the sidelines—the loudest person by far—he’s yelling, “Run, Muffy! GO!!”

Sarah’s head snaps up. 

Muffy.

“Oh my God—I totally forgot about that nickname! Remember how he wanted us to put ‘Muffy’ on our wedding invitations?” Obi laughs. “I thought your mom was going to divorce him.”

The memory clicks into Sarah’s mind. She had been Mallory’s maid of honor, so of course she had heard all about it. It had just been so long ago, she had forgotten. 

            Nicky, I love you. When are we going to tell them?

Sarah looks back and forth between her husband and her best friend. Things clicking into place. 

Building a snowman my ass, she thinks. 

But it’s so much more than just this trip. They’ve all been friends since college and Sarah has had a lifetime of feeling plain and mousy compared to beautiful and outgoing Mallory. She has always reasoned that Nick chose her because they complimented each other. They had even joked that two Nicks would be too much.

And now here she is.

Trapped. 

Trapped in a cabin… trapped in Colorado… trapped in a marriage. 

For some ridiculous reason, the scene from the Big Chill, when Sarah sends her husband upstairs to have sex with Meg as a payback for having an affair herself. She glances at Obi and wonders what they would say if she grabbed him, kissed him, and said that she was getting even. That they were getting even. Since this is happening to Obi too, even know he doesn’t know it. 

She knows that she won’t, that she can’t. 

But she also knows that she’s not the same person that she was before. She’s not even the same person who woke up this morning. She has made herself small and quiet for far too long while Nick just keeps taking up space.  

Sarah watches the snow fall quiet and soft, but also lethal— and strong enough to keep them from leaving. She knows that the snow will eventually stop, and the plows will come to dig them out from this place, setting them free. 

And then she will do the same. 

Until then, she will wait… silent, but stronger.