The Wives

by Tarryn Fisher

  “Same as her,” she barks when the server approaches our table.

  I smile at him apologetically as he hurries off. It makes her angry to be honest. A hazard of her job. She reminds me a little of my sister, bossy and so sure of herself that she comes across as irritated with everyone else. My sister and I are so different; our relationship has always felt tepid, something we could both do without. So for the sake of our mother, we try to see each other at least once a month, which usually ends up being an awkward dinner. We document the night with an overly enthusiastic selfie that we then text to our mother. She gets so excited that we’re hanging out that it makes the whole ritual more bearable.

  I decide to keep the upper hand and be irritated with her for being irritated with me.

  “Well?” I say, my voice terse. “Why am I here?”

  She swipes her fingers under her eyes and then checks them for mascara. You washed it all off this afternoon, I want to remind her. Then she looks at me squarely and says, “The first year Seth and I were married, I had a miscarriage.”

  My heart sinks. I want to reach out and touch her hand, but there’s something so stony about her face that I hold back. Regina doesn’t seem like the type who wants comfort. I don’t do the typical I’m sorrys, either. We aren’t two girlfriends sharing heartache over coffee.

  “Okay...” I say. My hands wrap around my empty mug for lack of anything better to do. The caffeine is already in my system and making me jittery.

  Plenty of women have miscarriages, most of them early in the pregnancy. Maybe she’s trying to find common ground.

  “I was twenty-one weeks,” she says. “I didn’t know about...yours. Seth... He never told me.”

  I let go of my coffee mug and sit back. “Okay,” I say again. “What did he tell you?”

  She glances at me, unsure. “He said that you just hadn’t gotten pregnant yet. That you were trying.”

  “You told me that you haven’t spoken to Seth until recently, that you’ve been over for years, so why would he tell his ex-wife something like that?”

  The server appears at our table with a fresh pot of coffee and a mug. She fills the empty mug without a word and sets it in front of Regina, then leans over to top mine off. When she’s gone, Regina pulls her mug toward her, cradling it, but doesn’t take a sip.

  I stare at her without speaking, waiting for her to continue.

  “What do you remember about your miscarriage?” she asks.

  I bristle under her question. I don’t remember much, I try not to; the details of my miscarriage are painful.

  “Thursday...” Regina reaches out a hand to touch mine and I stare at it, shocked. “Please,” she says. “This is important.”

  “All right...” I lick my lips and shut my eyes, trying to remember the details of the most painful day of my life. “I remember a lot of pain...and blood. Being rushed to the hospital...”

  “What about before that? Where were you?”

  “I... We were away. A weekend trip north.”

  She leans forward, elbows on the table. Her eyebrows draw together, the slash between them deep. “What did you eat...drink...? Did he give you anything?”

  I shake my head. “Of course we ate. Seth wasn’t drinking alcohol because I couldn’t. I had tea...”

  “What type of tea?”

  I don’t miss the urgency in her voice. It looks like she wants to leap across the table and shake me.

  “It was a tea he said his mother sent for me. To help with the nausea.” The moment the words are out of my mouth I feel the blood drain from my face. I’m light-headed. I grip the edge of the table for support and close my eyes. Regina had said that Seth’s parents were dead. Where did that tea really come from and why would he tell me his mother sent it?

  “I had terrible sickness, all day...” I can feel myself swaying; I take a few deep breaths to calm myself.

  “Herbal tea,” Regina says softly. “In a little brown sack.”

  I nod. “Yes.”

  “Was it the first time he gave it to you?”

  I think back. I’d been complaining about it; my doctor had prescribed something for the nausea but it hadn’t worked, so Seth suggested I try his mother’s tea.

  “She’s had quite a few pregnancies, Thursday,” he’d said with a smile when I’d asked him if it was safe. “All of my mothers used it.”

  I’d laughed at that, and he’d winked at me. In the end, he made me the tea, boiling water in the room’s little kettle. It had tasted like licorice and coriander and once I added some sugar I hadn’t minded it at all.

  “You drank it all weekend?” Regina asked.

  I nodded.

  “All right,” she says. “Okay...”

  Her face is pale, her eyelashes fluttering. And then she opens her rosebud mouth and tells me a story. And I wish she could take it all back, swallow it into herself so that I can pretend it’s not so. I’m not that stupid. I’m not that gullible. I’m not so easily used.

  THIRTY-TWO

  I leave the diner an hour later with nowhere to go. I don’t want to go back to the Cottonmouth house with its peeling wallpaper and musty smell. After Regina told Seth I was in Portland, he’d waste no time driving here. To what—reason with me? Drag me back to Seattle? I’m not ready to see him. I could go home, drive the two hours and beat him to it. I’d have enough time to grab some of my things and go stay with my parents. But my mother had not believed me when I was in the hospital and I tried to tell her the truth. I have no idea what their communication has been like over the last few days. Most likely, Seth had told her a partial truth: that I disappeared in the middle of the night, and that they need to find me before I hurt myself. I’m on my own. The confrontation with Seth inevitable, I’m going to have to face him soon, but Regina has asked for more time, and I’m going to give her more time. What she told me while sitting under the fluorescent lights of Larry’s had given me chills, rolled my stomach, made me doubt myself. My coffee had grown cold, a film appearing over the top as I slouched in the booth and listened to the dry recounting of her experience.

  I drive until I see a shopping plaza that houses a large chain grocery store. It doesn’t open for another few hours. I park in the back of the building, out of sight of the street, where I don’t feel exposed, and recline my seat all the way back so I can sleep. Just a few hours.

  I wake with a start to someone pounding on my car window. I bolt upright, groggy and disoriented.

  “You can’t park here,” a man barks, peering through the window.

  He’s wearing an orange and yellow vest, and while he pounds again he looks over his shoulder, distracted. I flinch as his fist hits the window close to my face. His fist is big and tan; it matches his shoulders, which are wide.

  When he looks back at me, he says, “You’re blocking the way.”

  I look behind him and see a garbage truck idling in the alley, waiting to get to the dumpster that my car is blocking. Without raising my seat, I turn on the ignition and hit the gas, driving around to the front of the store. I pull into another spot, thrown off by the sudden wake-up and the brute of a man who did it. Scrubbing the sleep from my eyes, I yawn. I need to go somewhere private, where I can think without garbage men screaming at me. I decide on the public library; they’ll have computers I could use. I’d driven past it the last time I was in the city having dinner with Seth; the elegant brick-and-stone structure caught my eye with its old-school beauty.

  I can’t remember the street it’s on or the name of the branch, I have to rely on my memory to find it. I have to rely on my instincts to find it. It takes me forty minutes of weaving up and down the busy Portland streets, trying to remember exactly where I’d seen it. When I finally catch sight of the building, a group of homeless men are packing up their belongings, getting ready to traverse the city for the day. Since it’s st
ill early, the lot used for parking is relatively empty, and I find a spot close to the building. The smell of urine hits me as soon as I step out of the car. Also, it’s freezing without a jacket. I hurry toward the building and find the doors unlocked. Breathing a sigh of relief, I duck inside, shivering, clutching my orange sweater around my fingers like gloves. The interior of the library is all open space underneath a domed skylight. I walk quickly through the lobby and toward the computers.

  “Two hours,” she says. “No eating or drinking.” Her voice is dry, brittle and unsympathetic. She’s more recording than person. When I nod compliantly, she eyes me suspiciously, like I might be hiding my breakfast underneath my sweater, but I’m allowed into the room.

  There is an elderly man already seated at one of the computers, wearing a fedora and jabbing intently at the keyboard with two pointer fingers. He doesn’t look up when I pass him and so I have time to stare at his screen. A dating website. He’s writing messages to a prospective partner. Good for you! I think. Seth would have called me nosy, made fun of my “all-seeing eye” as he called it. I have to remind myself that Seth’s opinion no longer counts, and that if it weren’t for my nosiness I’d still be in the dark, married to a man I only thought I knew.

  I find a computer near the back and slide into the plastic chair. My mouth is gritty from the diner coffee and nap in the car, my hair a greasy mess. The librarian on this floor keeps shooting glances at me like I might run off at any minute with one of the outdated computers tucked underneath my arm. I tap my finger impatiently on the desk as I wait for the internet to load, glancing around every few minutes like Seth might walk in and catch me here. The screen finally pops up and I type in my first search, chin resting on my palm. There are three things I have come here to learn about, and Seth’s parents are first up: Mama and Papa Polygamy! I type their names into the search bar, the names that Regina gave me: Perry and Phyllis Ellington, along with murder/suicide. There are no articles, no newspaper coverage. The only thing I can find is an obituary dating their births and deaths, their surviving child listed as Seth Arnold Ellington. According to Seth, there were other siblings from his other mothers, siblings much younger than him, since his father married his other wives when Seth was a teenager. But since Perry and Phyllis lived outside of the norms of society, there is little information on how to find Seth’s half siblings, who are now barely teenagers themselves. Perry’s legal marriage was to Seth’s mother, who now shared a grave with him. The only people who knew what truly happened to Perry and Phyllis were the other wives...and my husband.

  Abandoning that search, I think about the drug Regina had mentioned at the diner: misoprostol. A drug used to start labor, used in conjunction with mifepristone, it is said to be effective in bringing about abortion in the second trimester of pregnancy. Taken by mouth, it is safe to use until the forty-ninth day of pregnancy, after which it proves to bring on serious risks in the mother. My hands shake as I think back to the day my baby died. I move the mouse from link to link. I feel cold from the inside out, like my internal warmth has been snuffed out by the information in front of me. Used later in pregnancy it’s more dangerous for the mother, causing low blood pressure, loss of consciousness and infections after the abortion has occurred. I let go of the mouse and lean back in my chair, covering my eyes with my palms. The day of my miscarriage, Seth had stopped at the gas station for snacks. I remember the paper cups of tea he carried out to the car, how grateful I’d been for such a caring husband. The tea, the tea he said was sent by his dead mother. Oh my God. If Regina was right, it was Seth who caused the miscarriage.

  The pain I feel is almost unbearable. At the time of my miscarriage, I’d not seen the medical report from the hospital; I hadn’t wanted to. Seth had been my protector during those days: grieving with me, sheltering me from the things I didn’t want to hear. I wouldn’t have managed to get through that time without him. He’d told me that his decision for a second wife came when Regina decided that she didn’t want children. Why then would he end the life of his unborn child, endangering my life, too? Nothing makes sense. I want to pull at my own hair, scream from frustration. There can be no answers until Seth gives them to me. I want to see my medical files. I want to hear it all.

  My last search is the most painful, prompted by Regina’s last words before we parted ways outside of the diner:

  “I think there’s something wrong with him.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  Despite how hard I try, I can’t stop thinking about what Regina told me. Realization is a slow boil, but once you’re there, the anger is hot and spitting. My husband is sick—not just controlling, but disgustingly sick. Why had I never pressed him about his home life? He hid his trauma, blowing off my questions about his childhood, redirecting everything to me. And now I’m horribly afraid for Hannah—for her unborn baby.

  I hadn’t always been so trusting, had I? There was a time when I wouldn’t allow newcomers into my life, lest they distract me from my goals. What had it been about Seth that drew me in? Sure, he was handsome, but lots of men were. And he flirted with me, but that wasn’t a first, either. There were men all around me who spoke, and offered, and prodded for my attention. I had received their interest with a detached politeness. Sometimes I went out to dinner with them, or grabbed a beer, or did the things that girls my age were supposed to do, but none of it ever felt good—the way I imagined it was supposed to feel. Not until Seth.

  When I try to pinpoint why I’d been so drawn to him, wooed by his advances, it always boiled down to one thing: he’d been so interested in everything I was. He asked questions and seemed fascinated by my answers. I remember the way he raised his eyebrows when I said something witty, the soft, amused curl of his lips as he listened to me speak. It had seemed at the time that he didn’t have any ulterior motive, he was just as drawn to me as I was to him: pure chemistry. He’d quizzed me for my exam on that very first night in the coffee shop, and asked me detailed questions about why I wanted to be a nurse. No one had ever asked me those questions before, not even my parents. But that was it, wasn’t it? He’d had a carefully concealed plan, a strategy. A woman like me, detached from her family, devoted to her studies, was secretly longing for a connection. I don’t think I cared who it would be: a man, a woman, a friend or a long-lost aunt. I was waiting for someone to see me. I don’t know if I’m angrier with myself more for falling for it in the first place, or for not seeing it sooner. But I know that as humans we want to be heard, and so when someone does the hearing, we feel a connection to them. I was no different than any other woman who’d been made to feel special and then, over the course of time, abandoned by the man she’d given everything up for. Seth was a charlatan, a charmer. He used his personality to manipulate women’s emotions. By the time he told me about Regina, I was already in love with him. I was willing to accept anything he had to offer just to be loved by him. I’m ashamed to think about it.

  Right now Hannah is pressed somewhere under his thumb, blindly trusting, daydreaming of the life they’d have with their child. If what Regina had skirted around is correct, Seth is planning to do to her what he had done to us.

  I sit on a random bench in the city, a line of food trucks in front of me. A man in a Dodgers hat stands close by, looking longingly at the taco truck across the street. I wonder why he doesn’t just get a taco and make himself happy. It starts to drizzle but I don’t move. There is something bothering me about all of this, something that isn’t adding up. I close my eyes and try to fit all of the pieces together. Regina, Thursday, Hannah and Seth: what do we all have in common? What parts are we playing in Seth’s game? Some people have moments of absolute clarity; my moment comes like a slouched lurker. I entertain it only for a few moments before deciding what to do. I stand up just as the man in the Dodgers hat jogs across the street. Instead of joining the taco line, he heads for a salad truck. I smile to myself as we both make our choices.

  *
* *

  I’ve been home for a week. Home sweet home, which took the good part of three hours to tidy up after the way Seth left it. The night I got back, I found the condo a mess, like Seth had thought throwing all of the pillows and contents of my drawers on the floor would afford him answers to my whereabouts. The whole place smelled like rot, and upon inspection, I found the trash in the kitchen overflowing, the lid propped on empty containers of takeout and half-eaten fruit. My home felt strange...foreign. The first thing I did was find the 9mm my father had gifted me in my closet. Then I opened all of the windows and burned a candle for hours until the smell went away. Seth had found my phone where I dropped it in the elevator; it sat on the kitchen counter next to the bottles of medication I’d left behind, the screen smashed. I picked it up and turned it over in my hand. It felt like a warning, one I would be careful to heed. I’d left the phone where it was and carried the bottles of medicine to the bathroom, popping their caps one by one, dumping their contents into the toilet. The flush of water, the whirring of the tank refilling, were satisfying as I watched my prison disappear. My computer was gone, though he’d graciously left behind my wallet and keys. I called a locksmith, offering to pay them extra to come that afternoon, and while I waited I changed the alarm code.