The Good Wife

by Stewart O'Nan

  “Like someone else I know.”

  “Even at his age?”

  “Especially at his age.”

  At work she has imaginary conversations with him, tries out openings, dreams up topics they might discuss when she gets home.

  He lies on the carpet, his stocking feet pointed toward the radiator, and draws pictures Patty wants to find meaning in—portholed planes flying over mountains, boxy cars driving down highways.

  “How was school?” she asks.

  “Okay,” he answers, without looking at her.

  “Play with anyone special at recess?”

  “Adam and John.”

  He’s not interested, and she’s tired. She knows better than to make this into some big test.

  As she reads the paper, the silence builds. Finally, dinner’s ready, and she sends him into the kitchen to help her mother set the table. Out of habit, she’s cruising the classifieds, stopping at jobs she’s qualified for but not really reading them. She’s concentrating on the soft racket coming from the kitchen, the hum of the overhead stove fan, the ding of a pot lid against the cutting board, the clash of the silverware drawer, listening for the sound of his voice. So why, when it comes—the run and rise of a question followed by her mother’s indulgent laugh—does she feel hurt?

  OFFICIAL NOTICE

  MONKEY WARD IS BORING, CHASING THE SAME PRICE CHECKS EVERY shift. The only new skill she’s learned is how to refill the soap dispensers in the bathrooms. It’s past Valentine’s, and Jill’s still bugging her to work weekends. Patty hasn’t finished her ninety-day probation, so she can’t say no. She can’t explain that she needs to take her son to see his father in Auburn.

  Tommy’s lying when he says it’s all right. It’s been so long that Casey asks when they’re going to see Daddy.

  “Soon,” Patty promises, and makes good on it, but then the next weekend she ends up working, and the next. For the money she’s making, it’s just not worth it.

  That Thursday, when Jill corners her in the break room and asks if she can come in on Saturday, Patty says she has a family commitment.

  “1 really need someone,” Jill says.

  Patty doesn’t remind her that she’s worked six of the last seven weekends. She just shrugs like it’s out of her hands. “I wish I could help.”

  “What about Sunday?”

  It’s this kind of crap, more than the boredom and the measly paycheck, that convinces Patty she has to quit. She wrestles with the idea all weekend, running it by Tommy, because she’s not sure. She thinks she should wait until she has something else lined up. Tommy thinks she should go in and do as little as possible until they fire her. But it doesn’t matter if she’s fired or quits by herself, since she hasn’t worked there long enough to collect unemployment, and besides, she doesn’t want to be like that.

  She keeps looking, keeps working. As the end of her probation nears, she thinks everything will change when she makes cashier; when it doesn’t, she decides to find out when she’ll become eligible for unemployment. She thinks of calling Russ and trying to get on a truck for the summer, then remembers how hot and dirty patching asphalt is. There just aren’t a lot of jobs out there. She could find something in Binghamton or Elmira, but she’s already doing a half-hour commute.

  Being a cashier is strange, the way people look through her, like she’s a machine. And then there are the ones who want to be her friend. The weekends are the hardest, fighting a line all afternoon. By the end of the day all Patty wants to do is make a boxed dinner and watch TV with her eyes closed. And then she has to get up early and drive to Auburn.

  She’s making enough to pay the bills, but it feels like she’s wasting her time. Eileen and Cy are trying to get pregnant and saving for their own place. Shannon’s teaching. Even her mother’s started volunteering at church. Though it’s only been five months, Patty feels like she’s going nowhere. She has to remind herself that she originally saw the job as temporary. She can give it up anytime she wants.

  And she’s eligible for unemployment now. She could quit and take a paid vacation. If she waited till the summer, she could spend a whole month with Casey.

  June comes, and the end of school. The days are easier, the store empty all week long. Even the weekends are dead, unless it rains. Patty doesn’t see how they stay in business.

  She’s still weighing quitting when Jill gathers them at the end of another slow Friday and tells them she has some bad news. Headquarters has decided to close the store. If they want, they can have personnel forward their applications to the store in Johnson City, but she can’t guarantee there will be any openings.

  The decision’s easy for Patty. It’s no decision, really. Right then and there, by doing nothing, she quits.

  ELIGIBILITY

  THAT JULY, ON THE DAY TOMMY’S BEEN IN AUBURN EXACTLY FIVE years, they sign up for the Family Reunion Program. They’ve waited so long that handing in the form feels like an accomplishment.

  The coordinator who looks it over cautions Patty that there’s limited space; she won’t even estimate how long it will be before they’re contacted. In the meantime, she has a stapled handout of rules they need to familiarize themselves with. Patty reads them that night, as if they’ll be doing it this weekend. Already she’s putting together a menu, and a shopping list. She’s got to bring in everything, down to the salt and pepper. They’ll have pots and pans there, dishes and silverware (meaning she’ll have to wash them all twice—before and after). It doesn’t say anything about knives.

  She’s enjoying not working, taking Casey for rambles over the old Indian trails in the woods beyond the end of the yard, cutting through jungly patches of ferns, lying down on the mossy bank of the creek to show him water bugs and schools of minnows in the same sandy pools that fascinated her and Eileen when they were his age. She tells him about her father hunting wild turkey back here, how the big birds sleep in the trees. Every day they go farther in, exploring half-remembered spurs that wind up the hillside. They choose a rise that has a vantage of the main trail and build a lean-to, a secret hideout for Casey. She packs lunches so they can stay out all day and eat them sitting in his fort, watching the wandering flights of bugs. Back here where they can barely hear the road, the afternoons are endless and brilliant, made for daydreaming, but what she dreams of isn’t Tommy sitting in the sun with them, finally free, but their first real night as a family, locked inside a dark trailer behind razor wire.

  It will be months, at the most a year—at least that’s what she thinks, the closeness with Casey making her optimistic. He seems happier. He has a friend, Adam, who comes over to play. On hot days, Adam’s mother Beth drives them to the town pool and Patty lies out on a towel in the backyard like she’s at the beach, drinking a beer and listening to her father’s old leather-cased transistor. It’s like a vacation, except she doesn’t have a job to go back to. She tries not to let it ruin things. She’s fine as long as she’s getting paid. Eventually the checks have to stop, summer has to end. Patty doesn’t need her mother to tell her that.

  One blinding afternoon she’s lying on the towel, sweat glazing her skin, when her mother comes running outside with the envelope with the Family Reunion Program logo in the corner. Her mother hands it to her and then stands there as Patty tears it open.

  It’s just an acknowledgment, a carbon of their application. It takes her a few days but Patty comes to see it as a good sign. It’s the fastest the system’s ever gotten back to her.

  She’s not surprised that she hears nothing for the rest of the summer, or in September, when she starts at the Fotomat, or October, when she quits to fill in at the daycare run by Eileen’s friend Katie. She doesn’t freak out when Thanksgiving and then Christmas come, another solitary New Year’s. The hostages are released the day of Reagan’s inauguration, and while she’s annoyed at the yellow ribbons and tickertape parades, she can’t watch the reunion scenes without imagining Tommy in her arms, the promise of a new start. The anticip
ation actually makes time move faster, each passing day bringing her that much closer to him. She keeps the carbon of their application in a folder like a receipt, visiting it from time to time to prove to herself it’s real.

  Katie doesn’t need her for the summer, so she takes a waitressing job—the first and last she’ll ever have—at the Ruby Tuesday’s in the mall. It’s like Monkey Ward, they’re always bugging her to fill in weekends. She resents the customers with their bags of expensive crap, how impatient they are, as if their time is worth more than hers. “Do you think we can get some ketchup?” they ask.

  It’s been a year since they signed up for the program and they’re no closer than they were last August. Back then, she made a point of sitting down and bracing Casey, since he gets weird about visiting. Now when she reminds him, he mumbles and shrugs like he’s ducking an unpleasant chore. She doesn’t blame him for being afraid. At some point they’re going to shut the door and he’s going to be alone.

  The thought gnaws at her as she serves the shoppers’ kids their buffalo wings and mozzarella sticks. When he’s with Adam or John, he seems like any other boy his age, silly and intent on whatever game they’re playing; it’s when he’s alone that he goes silent, closing himself off with the TV or a library book, retreating to his lean-to in the woods. She worries that he’s growing up too serious, and that the visit will only make things worse. She thinks of going without him the first time, just to check it out. Tommy will understand.

  And still she catches herself falling into fantasies of how it will be: how he’ll play with Casey, how she’ll make his favorite dishes, how they’ll hold each other all night long. She knows it won’t be perfect—they’ll be in a trailer—but compared to the visiting room it’ll be heaven.

  She begins to expect the letter. Every day the mail lets her down yet she comes back the next day just as hopeful, sustaining a kind of cheerful insanity, a manic belief she realizes she can’t afford to lose.

  She faces Ruby Tuesday’s the same way, zipping her tips into a long wallet and ignoring the bullshit. She works when she wants to, and if they don’t like it they can let her go. She’ll be thirty-five next July. She’s had too many crappy jobs to sacrifice her real life for another one.

  And so she works, she waits, leafing through the mail each day, watching Casey watch TV the same way her mother hovers over her later.

  “It’s going to happen,” Patty tells her. “They don’t just let you sign up and then forget about you.”

  “I wouldn’t think so,” her mother says.

  “They don’t,” Patty says.

  But as the days go by, she wavers. She comes to expect nothing, and proves it to herself by not rushing out to the mailbox when she hears the jeep. Instead she sends Casey, who dawdles up the drive, spilling flyers and magazines.

  “Thank you,” she says, taking the pile from him with both hands, and one day late in August, as if to reward her, the letter is there. She doesn’t call for her mother, doesn’t stop Casey from wandering off. She’s hedging her bets, ready for bad news, or no news at all. In the kitchen, alone, she sits down to open it—slowly, as if it might change her life.

  THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

  ALL WEEK SHE BUYS THINGS AND SETS THEM ASIDE SO PACKING THE night before will go easier: a red Nerf football with the Bills’ logo on it; mini cardboard salt and pepper shakers like you take to a picnic; a new shortie nightgown still in its nest of tissue paper. She follows the long list of dos and don’ts in the packet the coordinator sent. No glass bottles, no aerosol cans, no alcohol (and that includes mouthwash and perfume), no candles, no rope. Not all of it’s common sense: no newspapers from that day, no photo albums. She needs to be careful; she knows they’ll confiscate anything iffy. She calls to make sure she can bring a homemade lasagna.

  The open bags distract her—all of them labeled with his name and ID number on masking tape. She can’t remember the last time she and Tommy took a trip, probably when they went camping and it rained. She sees them playing cards in the truck with the heater whirring, then stops herself with a quick shake of her head like she’s chasing a fly.

  She’s sure she’s forgetting something. Brand-new underwear, two new bras, two pairs of shorts, her best pair of jeans, two tops, flip-flops …

  Casey’s taking his own pillow and a box of his favorite cinnamon Pop-Tarts—a bribe she wishes she resisted. She’s bringing a deck of cards and some books for them to read. She’s still not sure it’s a good idea, bringing him. When she asks him what’s the first thing he wants to do with Daddy, he doesn’t have an answer.

  “The first thing I’m going to do is give him a big kiss and a hug,” she says.

  Her mother’s offered to watch Casey, but they’re already signed up as a family. And they are a family. Patty’s not about to give that up now, when they’re almost together again.

  Eileen kids Patty that she’d better double up on her pills, and while Patty goes along with the joke, she’s embarrassed—and feels bad for Eileen, since she and Cy have stopped trying. It makes Patty think how hard it is to keep anything secret. She and Tommy will find a way to be intimate again, she’s not worried, but that time should be theirs alone, not shared with the rest of the world. In a way, it’s already spoiled.

  The crack about her pills opens an even deeper chasm. Because they’ve never had a chance to be together, she just expected that Casey would grow up an only child. Now they have to make a decision. Six years between siblings isn’t that much, or seven, considering. Patty’s always wanted a girl—three girls, ideally, a rerun of her childhood. That’s not going to happen, but one is a possibility. It’s another reason she envies Shannon, her bond with Kyra. It seems just more of Shannon’s luck, having one of each (and more of Eileen’s, having none). Patty thinks she’s too young to give up that part of her life. It feels wrong, like she’s closing off a whole future, one richer, more intricate than the one she can see.

  She’s so close now, a day, then less. She can’t stop watching the clock, turning her wrist over to check, like she might miss it. At the P&C in Waverly she makes a ceremony of buying the fresh fruit Tommy requested. She doesn’t mind standing in line while the old lady in front of her fumbles with her coupons. Everything’s arranged: she’s off this weekend, there’s gas in the truck, she’s got traveling money. At home, after dinner, she packs Casey’s bag, leaving his toothbrush holder on the sink for the morning. Once he’s down, she puts together a box in the kitchen, her mother offering to help and then watching from the table. Patty knows she’s going to say something, so why all the suspense?

  “What time are you leaving?” she finally begins.

  “I don’t know,” Patty says, “ten?” like she hasn’t planned it to the minute.

  “It’s going to be lonely around here,” her mother says.

  “Next time you can come with us.”

  “No thanks,” her mother says, like it’s a joke.

  “I’m serious.”

  “I know you are.”

  Patty wonders why they do this to each other. She doesn’t want her mother to come, even if by some miracle she’d consider it; she only said it to get her going, which is dumb.

  In the morning, her mother comes outside to see them off, and Patty wants to apologize. It’s only as they’re hugging goodbye that Patty thanks her for everything, as if they’re moving, setting off for a new life.

  “Well,” her mother says, “say hello for me.”

  Casey’s waiting in the truck. Patty takes an extra minute to make sure the lasagna’s secure, then glides down the drive, one arm out the window, waving backwards.

  The drive up is drenched in a clear summer light. The lake camps are busy, their turnarounds crammed with station wagons. She sees a family out water-skiing, glimpses their white wake between the speeding trees. She points them out to Casey, too late, but just laughs. Usually she has to put on an act for him; not today. For the first time since she’s made this drive—and she�
�s done it hundreds of times, she knows the names on the mailboxes, knows the gardens and lawn ornaments, the junked cars outside the body shops—she’s not going to have to see it all again tonight.

  She hangs on to the mood through downtown Auburn, across the tracks and along Wall Street, where there’s special Family Reunion parking along the wall. She’s left enough time to find the entrance so they don’t have to go wandering around with all their stuff.

  Processing takes two hours (for no reason; there’s six of them and they’ve all been cleared in advance), and the cell of a waiting room is so air-conditioned it’s cold. It’s also non-smoking and doesn’t have any vending machines. Casey’s the only child. Of the other visitors, only one’s a regular, a short, Spanish-speaking woman who takes the bus from Albany; the others must be from downstate. Since it’s their first time, Patty has to show her marriage license. She and Casey have their pictures taken. Patty thinks it’s for an ID, but after she signs hers, the officer slides it into a file and she sits down empty-handed.

  They’re all moved together, like a team. “Ladies,” the officer at the desk says, taking a key ring from a locked drawer, “please follow me, and for your own safety, stick close.”

  She takes Casey’s hand and looks down at him to show it’s okay, this is just like a regular visit, and sees from his eyes that he doesn’t believe her. She bends to him, letting the others go ahead. “This is the worst part, right here,” she promises. “All we have to do is get through this, okay?”

  “Okay,” he says, but unsure.

  The guard has to call inside to have the door buzzed before he can open it with the key. He closes it after them, calls using a wall phone with no dial, and the bolts clack home. One at a time, they pass through a metal detector while a pair of guards root through their bags, stirring and jabbing their clothes with a steel rod. As the guards are working over Patty’s red bag, one of them stops the other, reaches in and pulls out her brand-new nightgown and kneads the package with both hands. They handle Casey’s PJs the same way, squeezing them as if they might be hiding a gun.