The Phone in the Gym Bag
Episode 1 of 5 of My Husband’s Second Phone by Helen Abbott
“Mom, Dad’s bag is buzzing.”
That is how it started. My daughter, five years old, standing in the hall in one sock, pointing at the gym bag by the front door like it had said something rude.
Here is who we are. I’m the wife. My husband works nights. Our daughter is five and hears everything. There is also my brother, who nobody in this family talks to, and a man I used to know, who never really left. They come later. They always do.
“It’s just Dad’s phone, Ruby.”
“Dad’s phone is on the counter.”
It was. I could see it from where I stood. Charging, face up, next to the coffee maker, the way it was every afternoon while he slept.
The bag buzzed again.
Nate goes to the gym after his shift, comes home at eight, sleeps until four. The bag sits by the door all day. I have moved that bag a thousand times. I have washed everything in it. I know what it weighs.
I unzipped it. Shorts. A towel. Deodorant. A water bottle with a dent in it.
And in the lining, in a slit along the bottom seam that I had never noticed and that had clearly been cut on purpose, a phone.
Small. Cheap. The kind you buy with cash at a gas station. A crack across the top corner of the screen.
“Whose is that?” Ruby said.
“Go find your other sock.”
She went. She’s five. Socks are a real problem at five.
I stood in my own hallway with a phone that did not belong in my house and I want to tell you I put it back.
I didn’t put it back.
There was no lock on it. There was one contact saved. Not a name. A letter.
R.
The messages went back about a month. They were short. They were the kind of short that people use when they are being careful.
Tuesday. Same place.
She doesn’t know.
Don’t bring the kid.
Did you move it?
Moved it. She won’t look there.
Friday. It has to be Friday.
I read them twice. Then I read them a third time, slower, the way you read something when you’re hoping it will say something different if you’re patient with it.
Don’t bring the kid.
My hands were fine. That’s the thing I remember. My hands were completely steady, and something in the middle of my chest had gone very small and very hard.
I zipped the phone back into the lining. I zipped the bag. I put it exactly where it had been, handles facing the door, the way he leaves it.
Then I made dinner.
Nate came down at four fifteen with his hair flat on one side and kissed the top of my head and stole a piece of chicken off the cutting board, and Ruby told him a long story about a boy in her class who eats glue, and he asked her follow up questions about the glue. He was completely normal.
That was the worst part. I kept waiting for him to be different, and he wasn’t.
“You okay?” he said, once, over the dishes.
“Tired.”
“Go to bed early. I’ve got her bath.”
He did her bath. He read her two books. He came down at eight thirty, put his boots on, put his real phone in his pocket, and picked up the gym bag.
I had taken the other phone out of it at seven.
I want to be honest about that. I didn’t plan it. I was walking past the bag with a laundry basket and my hand went into the lining and came out with the phone and then it was in the pocket of my sweatpants and I was upstairs, and I could not have told you why.
He didn’t check. He picked up the bag and said, “Love you, don’t wait up,” and he was gone.
At eleven fourteen the phone buzzed against my leg.
I was sitting on the edge of our bed in the dark. Ruby was asleep across the hall with her door open the way she likes it. I took the phone out and the crack in the screen caught the light from the window.
R: Is she asleep?
I looked at it for a long time.
Then I watched my thumb type yes and hit send, and I did not decide to do that. I promise you I did not decide.
The reply came in under ten seconds.
R: Good. Don’t go in her room tonight.
I was already standing up.