The Good Wife

by Stewart O'Nan

  When she gets her first welfare check, she can’t believe how small it is. She crumples the envelope and buries it in the kitchen trash, deposits the check at an ATM. She uses the money to pay back her mother for the phone bill, since Tommy’s calls cost more now. At first her mother says she can’t accept it, but Patty convinces her.

  She’s tired all the time, like when she was on the town truck, but that was a long time ago. She sleeps so deeply, drops off so easily that she worries she’s too old for this.

  The biggest drawback is not seeing Casey, but he’s at the age where he doesn’t want her hanging around anyway. He’s got a small core of friends, including Adam, who he’s known since kindergarten. They hang out after school and take the late bus home. Their latest kick is skateboarding. Casey’s always complaining that he has to borrow his friends’ boards. Patty’s not sure how serious he is, but when she goes to pick him up one day, she catches him practicing tricks on the handicapped ramp with everyone else watching, and though he makes her laugh—this huge kid on a tiny board—he’s actually pretty good. She still feels bad that his birthday got pushed to the side; now that she’s got some money, she asks him which he’d rather have, the Atari or a skateboard. He gives her a look like she must be kidding him. The only catch is that he has to wear a helmet. He can pick it out himself, but he’s definitely getting one.

  She knows sooner or later he’ll take a bad spill and her mother will go I-told-you-so, but Patty has so few chances to spoil him, and he is getting straight A’s. At the bike store, paying for the board feels extravagant and reckless—it’s half a Saturday’s tips—and when they’re in the car again and Casey thanks her, she says, “Just don’t break anything.”

  Otherwise she’s careful with her money, writing up a budget and sticking to it. She’s not crazy about taking the bus, but it’s cheaper than driving, and she’s not sure the Horizon could stand the wear and tear. She donates twenty dollars per trip, thirty when Casey’s with her. He hates going, and she understands. She doesn’t like seeing Tommy like this either.

  She’s still waiting to hear about their FRP when she turns forty. It’s a Wednesday, and she’s scheduled to work her regular shifts. Her mother has a cake for her after dinner, and gives her the handmade card Tommy sent. That’s not all: there’s a present from him, though the wrapping paper is familiar, straight from the basement.

  “I helped a little,” her mother admits.

  As Patty tears the paper away, she sees she has the present upside down. It’s a picture frame with a foldout fin in the back, and she flips it over. He’s drawn a pencil sketch of the two of them from an old photo, a kind of valentine. The frame is made of dozens of red and white Marlboro softpacks woven together in an intricate two-tone pattern, like a tile floor. Casey and her mother are impressed by the frame, but Patty’s more interested in the young couple in the drawing, knowing, as she does, what happens to them. It seems like the wrong thing to give someone turning forty, reminding her of the carefree people they used to be.

  Her mother and Casey have teamed up to get her a backpack just the right size for the lockers, with lots of pockets, proof that they do listen to her. When she picks it up, it’s heavy, something plastic rattling inside—tapes, and a Walkman with those lightweight headphones she’s seen other women wearing on the bus. Casey’s dubbed her favorite albums. He says there are enough tapes to last all the way up there and back.

  The cake’s homemade, and she’s happy with her gifts. It’s a milestone, she supposes, forty, but she really wasn’t expecting anything. So it’s a good birthday. She doesn’t mind working her shift at Ruby Tuesday’s. When there’s a birthday on the other side of the room, she joins the crowd around the table and sings along with the rest of the waitstaff like she does every night.

  The weeks pass so fast. Casey’s bored, and bugs her mother to drive him to friends’ places. He pitches a tent in the backyard and invites Adam to sleep over. When that’s too tame, they want to camp in the woods, but Patty vetoes the plan. The tent already smells of cigarettes, an allegation Casey denies. It makes no sense—he’s on his own all day long—but she wants them where she can keep an eye on them.

  As July turns to August she expects she’ll hear about their FRP. When she doesn’t, she doesn’t freak out. There’s no time to mope. Fridays there’s barely enough time to get to the bank and deposit her checks.

  She’s going along fine, and then in the middle of August, between the wilting heat and the freezing restaurant, she comes down with a cold and has to take time off so she doesn’t infect any of the patients. She only misses three days, but they seem endless. She sees why Casey says he’s bored. The TV’s crap. She never understood why Eileen shelled out for cable until now, and gives in.

  She’s glad to get back to work, at least at Riverview. She’s gotten to know some of the patients and likes delivering their meal trays and making sure they’re taken care of. She wheels them to the sunny common room overlooking the river and helps them play bingo. She finds their hearing aids and rewinds their books-on-tape. A lot of them just want to talk, and Patty can sympathize. The nurses give her grief because patients ask for her by name. For once she feels needed, part of the place.

  It makes Ruby Tuesday’s that much worse. After dinner, she’s tempted to call in sick and just lie on the couch and watch the new cable. She hates changing into the uniform and pinning on her nametag, hates the twilight drive and all the mall traffic. By the time she punches in she’s dull and clumsy. Busy nights she can’t keep up; slow nights she doesn’t make any money. She tries to remind herself that a second job is necessary, but by now she’s dug herself out of the hole. Driving home one night, she falls asleep at the wheel and only wakes up when her tires rumble over the shoulder, and that’s it, she quits.

  She’s doing all right with just the one job and welfare, and after her first three months she gets benefits. Now when Casey complains about a sore throat she can take him in and get him checked out. There’s even a pharmacy card, the first she’s ever had. She keeps it in her purse like a secret weapon.

  Labor Day weekend she works her regular shift for the double time. The next day, school starts, so Casey’s out of her mother’s hair. They should be hearing from the FRP coordinator any day now. Patty knows she’ll come home late one afternoon and the letter will be there on the kitchen table. Like everything in her life, it’s just a matter of time.

  BIENVENUE À NEW YORK

  IT DOES COME, BUT NOT UNTIL OCTOBER, AND THEN THEY’RE scheduled for the week before Thanksgiving—not the weekend, like she’s used to, but Thursday and Friday. She doesn’t think she should pull Casey out of school, so she goes alone, driving the Horizon, since there’s no bus during the week. The trailers there are the same, only colder, the water out of the faucet freezing her front teeth when she brushes. They spend a lot of time under the covers. She fixes him an early Thanksgiving dinner, and then, Saturday morning, the call comes and she has to leave.

  The drive’s not so bad split up. The next time she makes it, it’s spring and Casey’s with her. When they leave Owego it’s sixty degrees; five hours later they’re crawling along the Northway in a blizzard, following the blinking lights of a tractor trailer. In the summer, half the cars heading south have Quebec plates; in the fall they return, a reverse migration.

  That winter he’ll have served exactly half of his minimum sentence, meaning he’s halfway to his first crack at parole. Neither of them mentions it as they miss another Christmas together, another New Year’s, but Patty can’t help but run the numbers. It’s impossible to imagine another twelve and a half years like this. It already seems like forever.

  WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS

  THESE ARE SOME OF THE HARDEST YEARS, THE LONG MIDDLE OF HIS sentence, when they’re so far apart. He’s applied for a transfer to Elmira, but, according to Prisoners’ Legal Services, his chances are slim. She’s thought of moving to Plattsburgh, but what if they transfer him again? She doesn’
t want to take Casey away from his friends. Tommy agrees. They write more now, they visit when they can, they have their FRP every three or four months. Now that Casey’s a teenager, he’s busy with his friends, and moody like Eileen used to be. He can be sweet, helping her mother with dinner, and then he can turn around and be completely thoughtless. Patty has to badger him to come with her.

  “Don’t you want to see your father?” she asks.

  “Yes,” he says defensively, as if there’s no right answer.

  “He doesn’t have to come see me,” Tommy says, “but he shouldn’t be giving you a hard time.”

  “He’s not,” Patty says, because it’s true but also because she’s the peacemaker. He and Casey haven’t grown close the way she hoped, and now she needs to protect them from each other.

  It’s hard, because as Casey goes through high school, she becomes more and more frustrated with him. He still gets straight A’s and hangs around with the same slacker friends, he even gets a job washing dishes at the Parkview, but what little time he spends at home he’s shut up in his room like a bear. At night when she’s ready to go to bed, she sees a line of light under his door. She knows he stays up till two or three reading and listening to his headphones, and then he has to get up and catch the bus at seven. In the morning he’s sullen and touchy, banging out of the house with red eyes and wet hair, wearing the same black jeans he had on the day before. When Adam drops him off after work she’s in bed already and hears him come up the stairs and take a half-hour-long shower, then close his door. When they do have to talk, to go over their schedules or arrange for him to be picked up, he listens as if he needs to be somewhere else and she’s taking up his time.

  She knows he’s smoking and worries that he’s drinking.

  “Now you know how I felt,” her mother says, and while Patty sees the double standard, she lets Casey know he’s not fooling her. She sits him down and makes it clear that she’s not going to have him sneaking around behind her back. She knows from experience that people his age are going to party, that’s just natural; the important thing is to know how much is too much.

  New Year’s Eve, or New Year’s, since it’s two in the morning, his so-called friends dump him on the frozen lawn at the bottom of the driveway, passed out and jacketless, reeking of vomit. When he wakes up around dinnertime, she explains that he’s grounded for the next month—and he’s paying for the lost coat, a harsher penalty, since he’s been saving to buy a car once he gets his license. She says she’ll have to talk to his father; they might have to rethink that decision too.

  By the time she talks to Tommy, Casey’s apologized (he’s as embarrassed as he is sorry) and she’s calmed down. Tommy asks her to put him on, and Casey stands there listening to the lecture, saying nothing but a glum “Yes, sir,” then retreats to his room.

  “What did you say to him?” Patty asks Tommy.

  “I told him what I always tell him. I told him he needs to be thinking about helping out instead of making more problems for you.”

  “He didn’t do it on purpose.”

  “What, get drunk?”

  “Get sick.”

  He thinks she’s being too easy on him. “Christ, you’d think a kid who weighs that much could hold his liquor.”

  It’s a shame, because it ruins what should be a good time for them. The Bills are cruising through the playoffs, beating Dan Marino and the Dolphins and then, in the AFC championship, the hated Raiders. They’re going to the Super Bowl.

  It’s like a holiday, the anticipation. While the rest of the country is tying yellow ribbons around their coachlights and watching the flak float up from Baghdad, the Southern Tier is gearing up for a party. Even her mother asks Patty if she thinks they stand a chance, as if admitting the possibility. The seasonal aisle at the ShurSave is done up like a used car lot in twists of red and blue crepe paper. Patty can’t resist a package of paper plates and napkins with the Super Bowl logo. “Let’s go Bills!” her cashier cheers, setting off the whole checkout, and Patty feels weird. For so many years she’s been out of step with Owego; now all of a sudden she’s part of the crowd.

  Casey seems to be the only one immune to the craziness, disdaining the big game and the war, as if they’re both rigged. His skateboard sports a NO BLOOD FOR OIL sticker that upsets her mother. As if to make a point, he goes snowboarding with Adam the day of the game. Cy and Eileen bring two sixes of beer, and Patty makes her hot wings. All afternoon she feels dizzy. Most of the guys in Clinton are from the city; if the Giants win, Tommy will never hear the end of it. She’s told him not to bet anyone but knows he probably has. At halftime it’s 12-10 Bills. “This is exciting,” her mother gushes, but Patty doesn’t like it. She wants a slaughter like the Raider game.

  The Giants take the lead halfway through the fourth quarter, 20-19. The Bills get the ball back but have to punt. There’s barely two minutes left when their defense stops the Giants.

  She can’t watch as Jim Kelly leads them downfield. Every play she bows her head and covers her face, waits for Cy and Eileen and her mother to shout or groan with the outcome. The Bills are moving. “They’re doing it,” her mother keeps saying, driving Patty insane because she knows nothing about football and how quickly things can fall apart.

  With eight seconds left they have the ball on the Giants’ 30.

  “This is it,” Cy says as they line up to kick.

  This, Patty watches, standing, holding hands with Eileen, who’s holding hands with Cy, who’s holding hands with her mother, the four of them linked like dancers at a Greek wedding.

  Here’s the snap, and the hold. The kick is up. It’s long enough, the ball turning over and over, and then, incredibly, it crosses in front of the right upright, passes between the camera and the goalpost, breaking the white line and continuing to slice right, no good.

  “Oh shit,” her mother says, and lowers her arms as the Giants’ sideline erupts.

  There are no flags. The game’s over.

  Patty drops back onto the couch. She feels sorry for Tommy, and for herself, and promises she’ll never let herself get worked up like this again over something so dumb. But then, the next year, when the Bills lose their second straight Super Bowl, she feels exactly the same way. And the year after that. And the year after that.

  THE CLASS OF ’94

  THE GUIDANCE COUNSELOR LIKES CASEY’S GRADES. SHE WISHES HE had a sport or at least some extracurricular activities to round out his application, but his academics are so strong that she’s not worried. She knows Casey’s decided on computer science as a major, but has he thought about what kind of a school he’s interested in? Because, really, with his SATs and a transcript like this, he can go anywhere he wants.

  It’s midmorning and Patty’s in her work uniform. That might be the reason the woman goes over the financial aid form so thoroughly. At first Patty’s insulted, and then grateful, since she has no idea how they’re going to pay for this. Casey’s going to have to apply for student loans and hold down a part-time job, but even that’s not going to cover some of the places the counselor’s talking about.

  One name that comes up over and over is Cal Poly. Patty jokes that it’s too far away, she’ll never see him again. At heart she’s partly serious. Why does he have to move two thousand miles away to type on a computer? Cornell’s forty minutes from their front door, and very good, according to the counselor. SUNY-Binghamton’s another possibility, or Elmira as a fallback.

  After the meeting, Patty wants to talk but he has to go back to class. The bell rings, and the halls fill with teenagers, making her feel ancient, a fake, her jacket not quite disguising her uniform and white shoes, and she flees. The drive back to work gives her too much time to think about him leaving. Even if he’s only at Binghamton, he’ll be out of the house. She can’t believe it’s really going to happen.

  She’s always known he was smart, and while she’s celebrated his report cards over the years (and kept them, an envelopeful in the top dra
wer of Shannon’s dresser), she’s just expected good grades from him, because they both know he’s capable. Patty only realized how much she’d taken that for granted when the counselor showed her his transcript—a solid wall of A’s. She was proud, but also a little intimidated. The last couple of years she hasn’t pushed him; he’s done it all by himself. And she knows how hard it is. She’s been going to night school for her supervisor’s certificate, and even though she’s motivated and the professors are lenient, she still gets B’s. Like her father reading while the three of them battled over the TV, Casey has the ability to block out the rest of the world and focus on one thing. Her worry is that he’s too good at it, like her father, never letting anyone get close. She thinks he’ll be happy to get away and be out on his own, the way she was, breaking free of her mother’s house. She can see why California would seem ideal.

  It’s his decision, she tells him. Wherever he chooses, somehow they’ll find a way. Patty expects him to be more excited about the whole process. Every day he gets a stack of form letters and catalogues from all kinds of colleges, but she never sees him reading them.

  Tommy’s more excited than he is. When they talk on the phone, he tells Casey about a show on computer graphics he saw on the Discovery Channel. He thinks they should visit MIT, it’s supposed to be the best for that.

  “Are you interested in MIT?” he asks, because Casey hasn’t said anything.

  “I don’t know,” Casey says.

  “Where are you thinking of, then?”

  “I’ve got to look at my stuff first.”

  After Casey’s safely off, Tommy says he doesn’t understand. “What’s his problem, is he stoned or something?”

  “He’s fine,” Patty says. “I think he’s just overwhelmed by the decision. Wouldn’t you be?”