Endurance

The Beeks residence in Kenilworth glows, as always, under the relentless discipline of maintenance crews and Melanie’s weekly conscription of neighborhood teens to pull weeds or touch up the trim. The white of the siding is so clean it hurts to look at in direct sunlight; the shutters a mathematically precise navy, not quite black, matching the flag that flies stoically beside the front door. Even the boxwoods flanking the porch are squared off at crisp right angles, daring the unkempt oaks of the neighbors’ lots to spill over with so much as a single leaf.

From the curb, the house could be an ad in a real estate magazine for lives that never go off-script.

Michael parks behind the new Lincoln in the drive, registering for the first time the tremor in his own hands as he kills the ignition. He almost doesn't remember the drive up Sheridan—he must have taken the turn on instinct, then slipped into the bland trance that comes when you’re driving somewhere you’d rather not be. The windows on the house are mostly closed, save for one on the second floor where the blue drapes are parted just wide enough to see movement inside. Michael thinks he catches a glimpse of Abby, or maybe Melanie, but the figure ghosts away before he can wave.

The porch is empty, for now. He stands on the front walk, bracing himself, phone clutched in one hand with the text he meant to send to Abby (“Here, need to talk. Is now okay?”) still unsent. Instead, he slides the phone into his pocket and heads up the steps. The paint on the rails is so fresh that he half-expects it to come off on his hands.

He doesn’t make it to the bell. The door swings open before he can knock.

Marsha steps out, her face pale and eyes wild, like she’s just bolted from a car accident and can’t remember if she’s supposed to be walking away or calling for help. Her hair is up, but a few strands have slipped free and stick to her forehead. She is in her “good” blouse, the one she only ever wore for Michael’s graduation or the occasional brunch that required her to look like she belonged.

“Michael,” she says, and the way she says it, syllables stretched, tells him she’s not at all surprised to see him.

He freezes, halfway up the steps. “Mom.”

From behind her, the shadow of Lawrence Beeks slides into view. He is exactly as Michael remembers: back ramrod straight, hands folded calmly in front, eyes already scanning for vulnerabilities. He wears a blue shirt rolled to the elbows and dress slacks, as if he’s ready for either a board meeting or a bar fight. He moves beside Marsha, but doesn’t touch her. Not yet.

There is a silence that eats at the edges of the moment, neither side sure who is supposed to speak first.

Marsha makes a soft sound—somewhere between a sigh and a cry—and clutches at the top button of her blouse. She glances at Lawrence, but he says nothing.

Michael, sensing the script is his to write, looks at them both. “What’s going on?”

Marsha’s eyes widen, then immediately fall to the floorboards. “I was just leaving,” she says. “I should go.”

Lawrence’s voice is a velvet hammer. “No need to rush. Why don’t you come inside, Michael?”

Michael keeps his place on the top step, chin up. “I’d rather stay out here, thanks.”

He watches as Marsha’s hands shake, just a little, at her sides. Lawrence’s eyes flick to Michael, then back to Marsha, calculating.

A wind gusts through the hedges, ruffling Marsha’s blouse and knocking a single red leaf loose from the only Japanese maple allowed to grow wild in the Beeks yard. It lands at Marsha’s feet, a tiny wound on the perfect porch.

Michael’s voice is low, but it carries. “Are you sleeping with him?” He can’t believe he says it, but once the words are out, he feels both lighter and infinitely worse.

Marsha flinches, her breath catching. Lawrence’s jaw hardens, but he keeps his eyes on Michael.

“That’s not your concern,” Lawrence says, each word leveled out, like he’s dictating a brief to a hostile judge.

“Isn’t it?” Michael says, voice climbing. “You’re my mother. He’s—” He can’t finish the sentence. “How long has this been going on?”

Marsha tries to speak, but her lips just tremble. Lawrence steps forward, putting his body slightly in front of hers. “You watch how you talk to your mother,” he says.

Michael laughs, sharp. “You’re defending her now? You think I’m going to stand here and just let you ruin our family?”

Lawrence’s tone drops, dangerous. “Nobody is ruining anything. You need to calm down.”

Marsha puts a hand on Lawrence’s sleeve, as if to restrain him, but Lawrence barely seems to notice. Michael’s chest tightens; he can see his mother’s shame and her need for this man and he wants to rip it out of her, wants her to be the one holding the moral high ground for once in her life.

“I’m telling Dad,” Michael says. “I’m calling him as soon as I get home. He deserves to know.”

Lawrence smiles, the same smile he’s used on witnesses and juries. “If you do that,” Lawrence says, “I’ll call off the wedding. Since I’m the one paying for it, that seems fair.”

Michael’s mouth goes dry. He looks at his mother, who is now openly crying, her hands knotted together. “You’d do that to Abby?” Michael asks, but it’s directed at Marsha, not at Lawrence.

Lawrence answers anyway. “If this comes out, it won’t just hurt your father. It will destroy Abby.” He steps even closer. “Are you prepared for that?”

Michael’s hands ball into fists, and for a moment he fantasizes about decking Lawrence right here on his own steps, sending the man sprawling into the petunias Melanie planted for the charity tour. He can see, in his mind, the blood on the white trim, the crack of nose bone under knuckles, but the image is gone almost as soon as it comes.

He lets out a sound, half-grunt, half-cry, and stares straight at Marsha. “Is this true? Are you really doing this?”

She nods, once, her mouth working but no sound coming out.

Lawrence folds his arms. “I think it’s time for you to leave,” he says to Michael.

Michael stands rooted for a moment, then turns, almost stumbling on the first step. He can’t look at his mother, or at the house, or at the yard with its fluorescent-perfect grass. All he sees is the red leaf, still at the base of the porch, and he kicks it aside as he storms down the walk.

He doesn’t hear the door close behind him. Doesn’t hear if Marsha and Lawrence go back inside, or if they stand there, locked in whatever sick gravity has kept them in orbit this long.

As he slides behind the wheel of his car, he looks back once, up the long white face of the house, and for a second it looks like it’s wincing, the blue-black shutters pinched tight against the sun.

The confrontation doesn't end with Michael’s retreat—it only splinters, dividing the house into its constituent agonies.

Marsha stands at the edge of the porch, gripping the balustrade so hard the knuckles of both hands go bloodless. She watches her son cross the yard, his shoulders hunched like he’s bracing against invisible hail. When he hits the curb, he stops, slaps at his pockets as if searching for keys, but his car is only steps away. She wants to run after him, to beg him not to hate her, but her legs won’t move.

Lawrence is already back in the entryway, door ajar, silhouette haloed in the foyer’s white light. “You should come inside,” he calls, the words practiced and dry. “You’re making a scene.”

Marsha doesn't answer. Instead, she turns, eyes darting the length of the street, making sure no neighbors are watching from behind the slats of their own perfect plantation shutters. She knows better than to think they aren’t.

The sun has faded behind the eaves, casting the porch in a cold, flat light. For a moment, all she can see is the red leaf that Michael kicked away, now abandoned on the sidewalk. She stares at it as if it might contain instructions for the rest of her life.

She becomes aware, slowly, of Lawrence standing behind her, footsteps silent on the wood. He’s close, but not so close as to touch her. She can smell the faint, clinical aftershave he never changed from his college days.

“I told you this would happen,” Lawrence says. His voice is quieter than before. “He was always the clever one.”

She lets out a tiny, frayed laugh. “I didn’t think it would be like this.”

He shrugs, shoulders rising and falling with the bored elegance of a man who’s never paid for his own parking ticket. “You did what you had to. So did I.”

She shakes her head, refusing the logic. “This isn’t what I had to do.” Her voice is thin and wet with grief, but she stands straighter. “I have to tell Mitchell.”

Lawrence steps around her, putting himself in her line of sight. “That would help nothing,” he says. “You’d destroy him. You’d ruin your son, your husband, and my daughter in one stroke.” He speaks the last word with a slow, surgical precision.

Marsha looks up at him, and there’s a new anger in her face—a ragged version of the pride she once had, before she’d let men and mortgages and Michael’s long absences wear it down. “You don’t get to decide what’s ruined or not,” she says. “You’re just a man who got caught.”

He almost laughs, but doesn’t. Instead, he looks at her with a kind of pity, then steps back, giving her the space to leave if she wants.

She stands her ground. “I’m ending this,” she says. The tremor in her hands has spread to her shoulders, her voice stronger only because it has nowhere else to go. “You can do whatever you need to, but I’m done.”

Lawrence’s face is a study in controlled collapse. For the first time, he doesn’t have a ready answer. He swallows, then lets his gaze wander over the porch, the yard, the shrinking patch of sunlight on the stoop.

“I didn’t expect you to be the one to break,” he says at last. He tries for a smile, but it fails.

Marsha folds her arms, hugging herself. “I didn’t either,” she admits, and it’s not clear if she means the affair or her own resolve.

Lawrence turns to go, but stops at the threshold. “He loves her too much to risk it,” he says, more to himself than to her. “He won't say anything. ”

She lets the silence answer for her. When the door finally shuts behind him, Marsha sags against the rail, pressing her forehead to the cool, white wood. A neighbor kid bikes past, slowing at the sight of her, then coasts quickly on, the thrum of wheels fading into the hush of evening.

After a while, Marsha finds her way back to her car. She sits with her hands on the steering wheel, watching the lights flick on in the windows of the Beeks house, one after another, as if someone inside is checking every room for missing people. She looks at her own hands—once steady enough to plant an entire garden from scratch, to raise a son without ever once letting him see her cry—and wonders how it’s possible to have so much left to lose.

She thinks about what she will say to Mitchell, how she will start, what lies she will have to kill first. She thinks about Michael, and how when he was six he used to bring her dandelions from the yard and say, “Don’t be sad, Mommy, look—they’re sunshine you can hold.” She closes her eyes, and for a moment she almost feels that sun, the warm promise of it, before it slips away again.

Inside the house, somewhere in the maze of rooms, she can hear Lawrence’s voice, low and muffled. Maybe he’s already making his next move. Maybe he’s telling Abby that Michael was acting strange, that something is off, that he should be watched.

Marsha lets the engine idle. She thinks about running, about taking the car south, maybe back to the city, back to her old apartment where the only people who ever knew her name were the ones who wanted flowers for funerals or bar mitzvahs. She thinks about how simple life used to be, and how impossible it is now.

She sits in the car until her tears run out, and when she finally starts to drive, she does so without looking in the rearview mirror, the night folding around her like a bruise.