The Pretend Wife

by Bridget Asher

  “Are you asking me for a divorce? We didn’t even open all the presents yet.” He was trying to sound light.

  “I’m only asking for a pretend divorce,” I said. “They’re less barbaric.”

  “I refuse to sign the papers.”

  I looked at him. “This is serious.”

  “You don’t have to tell me it’s serious,” Elliot said. “I want the overflowing grocery cart with the snot-nosed kids, and you, forever.”

  I picked up my bag from the foot well, unzipped it, and reached inside, feeling for the edges of the photograph his mother had given me. I picked it up, stared at it for a moment—the family that was the three of them, the ghostly ribbon of the curtain, the rippling water at their backs. It wasn’t mine. I handed it to him.

  “No,” he said. “She gave it to you.”

  “But it doesn’t really belong to me.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “You’ll want it,” I said, “later, after she’s …”

  “It’s yours,” he said with finality. “She wanted you to have it.”

  I sat the photograph in my lap. What would I do with it? Where would I put it? Could I set it up in the living room next to the photograph of my mother wearing the spaghetti-strapped dress and holding her beaded purse? What would Peter think of that? For now, I simply put it back in my bag. The truth was that I wanted to keep it. I’d hoped he’d refuse to take it back.

  “I want to know … I want you to give me a call when the time comes … when your mother passes. I need to know.” I wanted to tell him that she’d told me to stand in the field with a rake and not make decisions based on fear. But I couldn’t.

  He nodded.

  I climbed out, shut the car door, and walked quickly to the train station—its bank of windows fogged by the mix of humidity and air-conditioning—and there I saw a reflection of myself walking in fog.

  I DECIDED ON THE TRAIN ride that I had to toughen up. And, in the face of loss, who was tougher than my father? I would remove myself emotionally. I would observe marriage. I would look scientifically at this thing that Peter and I had. I would approach it the way my father would a chirruping trout off of Cape Cod. I would start from scratch, asking simple questions to find simple truths: What is marriage? How does it operate in private, in public? What’s its role for the individuals involved and in society at large? And, of course, what I really wanted to know was what marriage had to do with me, personally, what did it want from me, what did I owe it, and what did it owe me in return.

  The only glitch in this plan was that my father was no longer my only model on the subject of loss. My conversations with Vivian rang in my head. In my quest to find simple truths, I knew that I would have to confront my father. And in a larger though hazier way, I knew that from now on, I wouldn’t be able to simply let fear make my decisions for me. Though I wasn’t sure what this really meant, this new way of living would require a kind of bravery that I wasn’t sure I had in me.

  I wasn’t ready to live this bravely. Not yet. Elliot had come back into my life like a windstorm, and I’d lost my bearings. Couldn’t I wait to be brave until I at least had some idea of where I stood in my life? I granted myself this reprieve.

  I knew this was cowardly and wrong, but I hoped that Vivian’s wisdom and the charge she’d given me to live a life not ruled by fear would return to me when I needed it most.

  For now, still feeling windswept by Elliot, I focused on trying to put my things back in order.

  When I got home, Peter was asleep on the sofa, curled toward the television, which was on with the sound off. He had a throw pillow wedged under his head and a fist balled up by his chest. I sat on the sofa at the space by his shoes—he still had them on. I assumed he’d stayed out late and fallen asleep hard and fast—maybe a little drunkenly. Because of shift work at the hospital, his natural internal clock had eroded and he slept when he was tired, instead of by any set pattern.

  Ripken was pawing at me to take him out. I patted his knotty head. “Okay,” I said. “Okay.”

  When I stood up to get his leash, Peter rolled to his back and stretched. “You’re home.”

  “I’m home,” I said. Already thinking as a scientist, I decided that marriage had much to do with home. The two concepts overlapped in so many ways that maybe it was possible to mean one and say the other and no one would notice.

  He propped himself up on his elbows. “How was it?”

  I thought about this for a moment. “It was sad. They’re losing their mother, and she’s a wonderful person. And it’s hard to lose someone you love.”

  “Yes, that’s true,” he said, as if this hadn’t dawned on him. “I meant, I guess, how was it pretending to be someone else’s wife? How was that part?”

  “Oh,” I said, picking up Ripken’s leash from the ceramic bowl we kept it in. “That was strange. I’m not much of a liar. I told her that I knit hats for a living. Does anyone knit hats for a living?”

  “Old women who live in Bulgaria?” Peter offered. “I think the correct term is milliner, not someone who knits hats.” He often corrected me on things like this. I’d called his mother a piano player for a year or two before he finally blurted, “Pianist! She’s a pianist! Piano players work in honky-tonk bars or wedding bands.”

  “Too bad you weren’t there,” I said. “You’d have smoothed out all my lies for me.” I clipped the leash onto Ripken’s collar. I looked at my watch. “I have to meet Eila at a client’s house at three-thirty,” I said. I had about an hour to get the dog walked, shower, dress, before I had to take off. Ripken was bouncing around in joyful circles now. “Come with us,” I said.

  “I’ve got to take a shower,” he said, then he walked up behind me and put his arms around my waist. He whispered into my ear, “But, tell me, seriously. What was it like? Did anyone clink wineglasses so that you had to kiss?”

  “It wasn’t a wedding,” I said.

  “C’mon, you had to have held hands, at least, to be convincing,” he whispered.

  “Would that be some kind of weird turn-on?” I asked.

  “No,” he said, dropping his hands. “I just want to know what happened.” And now I could tell that he wasn’t curious as much as he was jealous.

  “I thought you weren’t jealous—that you tried it on and the collar fit too tightly.”

  “Hey, I’m just trying to get a picture of how it all played out. That’s fair.”

  “Well, I talked to his mother a lot and his sister, who has two kids, and Elliot. And they all seemed to be doing the best they could, under the circumstances. This isn’t really a happy time for them. I’m here. I’m back.”

  He sat down on the sofa. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Forget it,” he said. “I can see that I’ll just have to ask Elliot how it all went. He’ll give me a straight answer.”

  “Elliot? Don’t bother him with this.” I thought of Elliot with his stark honesty. I walked to the front door with Ripken.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask him to go out golfing with some of the guys, introduce him to a couple of people.”

  “He doesn’t have time to golf. He’s at the lake house with his mother every weekend and juggling teaching.” What would he spill to Peter during an interminable golf game?

  “I’ll ask him to do a weekday morning round with the ladies. He’s a professor. That’s barely a job,” he said, and then he leaned forward. “Why don’t you want me to ask him any questions? Any reason?”

  I shrugged. “Ask him anything you want,” I said. “It’s fine by me!” I opened the front door and walked out, Ripken trotting ahead of me.

  I felt more than a little panic-stricken. Once outside, I flipped open my phone, but I had no idea whether I should call Faith or Helen, both or neither. In my last conversation with Faith, she’d accused me of trying to get a rise out of Peter, trying to make him jealous by being Elliot’s pretend wife. And then Helen told m
e that I tried to boost up Jason because I wanted to boost up myself, that I didn’t think enough of myself. I didn’t particularly want to talk to either of them. But the fact was that I had to learn to overcome these kinds of things if I was going to have long-term friendships with women, and because I have no sisters, I needed these friendships to keep me grounded. It’s just the way it is. Good friends say what they have to say. If it isn’t that kind of friendship, then it isn’t worth it. I needed more honesty in my life, not less.

  I called Helen and got her voicemail. I wasn’t sure how she did it—the voice in her outgoing message was professional but also sexy. The words I’m not in right now seemed to have a double or even a triple meaning because of the nuance of her tone, but there was nothing you could call her on. On the surface, it was the same as everyone else’s outgoing message. Regardless, I felt blindly flirted with. After the beep, I suggested the possibility of getting together that night for a quick dessert at a creamery not far from Faith’s house.

  I called Faith and she answered immediately. “How did it go?” she whispered. She was obviously somewhere she really shouldn’t have been picking up. I kept it as short as possible: “The situation calls for emergency ice cream.”

  “That bad?”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m about to give a speech about something I know nothing about. Have I mentioned I’m faking my way through life?”

  “Should I try that?”

  “I think we all already are.”

  At work that day, Eila and I were trapped in someone’s living room. The couple—an uptight pair, nouveau riche, one with adult braces—had excused themselves to argue the finer points of their dedication to Eila’s total vision for their staging. They’d shut themselves up in their granite-packed kitchen. Eila caught me staring absently at the tan Berber carpeting.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Oh, nothing,” I said, giving her an overbright smile.

  “I know something’s wrong. Spill it.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m trying to hold my life together, I think.”

  “Oh, right. You’re still so young. I forget that about young people.” She patted my knee. “Listen, when you get older, you’ll realize that your life isn’t held together to begin with so trying to hold it together, well, that’s a myth. An impossibility.”

  The voices in the kitchen rose feverishly. Something was slammed down on granite—a nouvelle cuisine cookbook? Then there was quiet.

  “Listen to them in there. They still think they’re holding it together. Ha!” she said. “It’s disastrously tragic.”

  By the time I got to the creamery, I was about fifteen minutes late. Our clients’ kitchen argument had lingered after they reemerged, and every joint decision was a slow, agonizing process of grunts, glares, angry gestures, accusations, and the wife throwing her hands in the air at regular intervals and saying, “Whatever!” Faith was already eating frozen yogurt at a table in the back. She’d brought Edward and he was dozing in his car seat next to her. There was a line of tween girls in full makeup with hair plastered into ponytails. They were wearing matching dance outfits, blue leotards with spangles, but they had on sneakers and windbreakers.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I thought that Helen would be here at least and you two would start chatting without me.”

  “She called a minute ago and said she would if she could but she can’t. I think she might be in love or something and too embarrassed to tell us that she’s fallen so quickly after swearing off men again.”

  “This would be a new record.”

  “Would it? I’m not so sure. She likes to swear off men so that she can tempt herself. It’s a cycle.”

  I shrugged and sat down. I didn’t want to deconstruct Helen, not without her here. That wasn’t worthwhile. Plus, I was in need of deconstruction myself—some clarity. I picked at a thread on my pocketbook and then stared out the plate-glass window.

  “Order something.”

  “I can’t eat,” I said.

  “I thought this was an ice-cream emergency.”

  “I’ve been with a squabbling couple for the last three hours. They jangled me. Maybe in a minute,” I said. “Plus, there’s a line.”

  “They appeared out of nowhere,” Faith said, pointing her cone at the group of girls. “I’m scared of them. It goes way back. A primeval fear.” They were loud and nervous, poking each other, whispering then roaring with laughter. “They’re like a herd of unpredictable animals.”

  We watched them for a minute. The lead girl was obvious. She had the best hair and she wasn’t loud at all, but everyone seemed to swirl around her. Two of the mothers were with them, trying to take orders and present them, as clearly as possible, to the woman behind the counter, scribbling notes.

  “We were once that young,” I said.

  “It seems impossible.”

  “How’s Edward feeling?” I asked. “One day, you know …”

  “Completely fine. He’s a trouper. And he’s agreed never to be an adolescent. He’s going to skip it,” she said, then leaned forward on her elbows. There was a lull and she knew that I was stalling. I didn’t know where to start. “Tell me what’s going on,” she said.

  I sighed. “Something happened,” I said, meaning that I’d changed, that something deep inside of myself had taken a turn.

  “Did you have an affair with Elliot?”

  “No,” I said. “Well, there was a kiss. But it’s worse than an affair.”

  “Oh,” she said, sitting back, knowing exactly what this meant. “It’ll pass,” she said. “Everything will be fine.”

  “Somehow, this trip, it changed me,” I said.

  She looked at me quizzically.

  “His mother gave me a photograph of Elliot and his sister and herself, standing in the yard, and it’s blocked off a little by this bit of curtain. I can’t explain it,” I said. “But the photograph moved me. It was such a gift. It made me feel better, stronger, more taken care of. It’s like I realized I’m being watched over … It’s like she understood …”

  “Understood what?”

  I couldn’t do any better than that. I didn’t know what else I meant. “Nothing. I hid the photograph in the top shelf of my closet.” I looked at her. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to wreck my life. I’ll fake it, right? I’ll fake my life even better than I have been. But, between you and me, I don’t want it to pass,” I said. “I don’t want fine.”

  She nodded. Edward stirred at her feet. She jiggled the car seat and he shifted again and then let out a soft purr and was back to sleep. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t imagine.”

  “The problem is that Peter wants to take Elliot golfing. He wants to introduce him around, insinuate him into our friendships.”

  “That would be a disaster.”

  “I know.”

  The girls were clumping at the different tables now—the seating arrangements were highly ritualized and hierarchical. They buzzed around each other, stood up, moved over, sat down again, the combinations coming together, falling apart, rejoining in different constellations.

  “You just have to go cold turkey,” Faith said. “Don’t let everything fall apart.”

  “What if life isn’t held together to begin with, so trying to hold it together is impossible?” I asked her.

  She laughed. “Life is held together,” she said. “It might only be held together with a bunch of rigged-up ropes, but we keep checking the knots, making sure that everything’s holding. We have to.”

  After telling Elliot just that morning not to call me, not to have any contact at all except on the occasion of his mother’s death, I called him. I was on my way home from the creamery—I’d ordered a scoop of ice cream and it sat melting in its waxy cup. I pulled over into a development of boxy 1940s-style houses to make the call.

  “Hello,” Elliot said. His voice was deep and soft and a little frayed at its edges. I thought of his mo
uth and his white teeth and his jaw. It happened that quickly, his whole body appearing in my mind.

  “Hi, it’s me.”

  “I thought we were under strict orders …”

  “Peter is going to ask you to play a round of golf with him and some of his buddies.”

  “That’s thoughtful of him!” Elliot said, as if unaware of the possible awkwardness.

  “I want you to be busy.”

  “I might be busy. What date is he looking at?”

  “I’m not calling as his scheduling secretary.”

  “Oh? Really?”

  “Really.” I fiddled nervously with some papers, picked up a stack, and tapped them into order.

  “You want me to decline the invitation.”

  “Yes,” I said definitively. “But no!”

  “Which one? Yes or no?”

  “You can’t decline outright, because that would be suspicious.”

  “Declining outright would be suspicious, how exactly?”

  “He thinks something happened.”

  “Something did happen.”

  “Listen! Just say you’d love to and then later say you can’t.”

  “This is complicated. How about I just go?”

  “Do you even play golf?”

  “I did a few times in high school. My friend, Barry Mercheson, his parents were members of this club and he caddied. We drove the carts around, mostly. It was before I had my driver’s license so …”

  “This isn’t funny,” I said.

  “How about I go,” he said. “And just have fun and play some golf.”