The Pretend Wife

by Bridget Asher

  I stood there for a moment, alone, and then I said, “Peter, I don’t know how to fix it.” I walked back to the dining room table, picked up my pocketbook and keys.

  “Are you walking out?” he said, finally showing some real anger. “You can’t walk out on a fight.”

  “Are we fighting?” I asked.

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “Of course not. You tell me you’re in love with someone else and we’re not fighting! That’s what we’re not doing!”

  “I’m going out for a while,” I said, feeling sick. “We’re not making any progress here. I have to think. I need to be alone.”

  “We’ve got a potluck tonight,” he said. “At Faith’s. Did you forget?”

  “I’ve got to go,” I said, and I left.

  I drove for an hour or more, running over the argument in my head, seeing my mother’s taut, then lulling stitches in my mind’s eye. I imagined her driving, like I was, as the dusk settled in and then night. I’d walked out on both my father and my husband. I felt outside of myself, detached, and invisible. No one knew where I was or what I was doing or what I was going to do next. I didn’t either.

  Eventually I wondered where I should go. I needed to talk to someone, didn’t I? I couldn’t wander forever. Faith would have been my first choice, but she’d be preparing for guests and then guests would be arriving. That left Helen, who understood men and relationships and love with her own particular brand of insight. I knew she probably wouldn’t go to Faith’s potluck, claiming it was the married clique—not to mention too clichéd to bear. It was a Sunday night. I hoped that she was home.

  I knocked on the door of her apartment. I heard her bustling within. Helen’s body seemed to have its own entourage of restless gestures that followed her everywhere. “Who is it?” she called out.

  “It’s me,” I said. “Gwen.”

  The bustling stopped for a moment, and then the door swung open. She looked at me, and I wondered what I must have looked like—wide-eyed, disheveled, pale? “Gwen,” she said. “What’s wrong?”

  She ushered me in, sat me down on the long white sofa. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know where to begin.

  “Okay,” she said. “Hold on.” She brought out a bottle of wine and two glasses. She filled a glass and handed it to me. “Au Bon Climat, 2005. Pinot noir. Have some.”

  I took a sip, closed my eyes, let it fill my mouth. It was smooth and good. When I opened my eyes, I nodded. “It’s really good.”

  “So start talking,” she said.

  And I did. I talked and talked and talked. She didn’t interrupt. She sat back. She nodded. She sipped her wine. I didn’t cry. I didn’t even tear up. I simply reported the last few months of my life—Elliot Hull, his mother, his sister, Bib and the nesting eagles, the golf outing, Elliot in the grocery store parking lot, the woman in his car, my father’s confession, my mother’s knitting, her accident, my argument with Peter, everything. I said it all quickly, almost breathlessly, but with a certain serenity too. I narrated all the way to this moment, on her couch, with the wine. And I looked over to her. “That’s why I’m here,” I said.

  I looked at Helen and realized I’d told this story while staring off, glancing around her apartment, not making eye contact. Basically, I told the story while living in my own head. I was surprised now that her face was flushed, the pale skin of her neck blotchy. Her wet eyes were scanning the room. “I don’t know what to tell you,” she said.

  “You always have something to tell everyone.”

  “Not this time,” she said. “You should call Peter. You should talk to him.”

  “That’s it?” I sat back and stared at her.

  “Call him,” she said. “He’ll be worried about where you are. He loves you.” She stood up and said, “Excuse me. I have to go to the bathroom.”

  I sat there a moment. I wondered if this was the reason Helen had never gotten married, if she was incapable of insight when it was needed most, if she shut down on her men, in just this way, in the crucial hours.

  But too, I decided she was right. Simply put, she’d told me what to do. Peter would be worried. He did love me. I dug in my pocketbook for my cell phone and then realized I’d left it in the passenger’s seat of my car. Helen’s cell phone was on the coffee table. I picked it up and dialed Peter’s cell number.

  It rang, but only once, and then there was Peter’s voice, and I could immediately tell he was drunk. I didn’t say a word. He said, “Hey, why haven’t you called? I’ve been waiting for your call. Did you get my messages?”

  For a moment, I was relieved that he’d gotten drunk because I’d left and that he’d been desperately waiting for my call, but the moment quickly disappeared. I didn’t answer—because this was Helen’s phone, not mine. Peter thought Helen was calling, not me. Hey, why haven’t you called? I’ve been waiting for your call. Did you get my messages? His voice was so intimate and private and urgent. My heart started pounding so loudly that I heard it in my ears. My stomach felt light as if filled, sickly with air. I shut the phone.

  Helen walked back into the room. She looked so simple now. Helen. She was a traitor. All of her gauzy dresses, her flapping and bending, her wild gesticulation, it was all a cover-up. For what? This simple woman with simple needs. She was a brute, a thief. I imagined all of us as animals suddenly. That’s all we are, I thought. Animals. “Did you call him?” she asked.

  I nodded, but it was only the slightest jerk of my head. I put her cell phone down on the coffee table.

  She looked at the phone and then at me. “Did you …” she took a step toward the phone and then stopped. She clasped one hand with the other, as if one were trying to keep the other from making the wrong move. “You used my phone,” she said.

  I put my pocketbook straps on my shoulder and stood up.

  “Wait,” Helen said. “What did he say?”

  I walked to the door.

  “Gwen,” she said, and then she relied on her flurry of gestures, all of which meant nothing. She said, “It wasn’t premeditated. We ran into each other in a bar, after he’d played golf with some buddies. He walked me home in the rain and it just happened.” I thought of his water-logged spikes. “We tried not to see each other again, but … listen. I’ve shut it down. For good. It’s over.”

  And this was the confirmation. She and Peter had been having an affair. She sighed. “I don’t blame you for hating me. I hate myself.” And then she reached out to touch my arm. I held up my hands to stop her. I opened the door and walked quickly down the hall, the patterned carpeting moving swiftly under my feet, the yellow walls sliding by.

  “Gwen!” Helen shouted. “Gwen!”

  When I got outside, there was snow. It was only early November so I felt disoriented, and it was easy to imagine that I was in a different world now. It had dusted the ground and my small Honda, and it was still coming down, swirling and gusting.

  I got in my car, turned on the engine, the wipers. The snow was light and dry. I put the car in drive and eased onto the streets. Peter and Helen had been carrying on an affair—this stood as a fact in this different world. I could still hear his drunken voice: Hey, why haven’t you called? I’ve been waiting for your call. Did you get my messages? Was this something Peter had done to get back at me? I remembered the way he’d leaned onto Helen’s lap and bitten her corsage. Didn’t he dislike Helen? He’d said she laughed like one of those old toys that when you press the bottom, the toy collapses. I remembered how she’d forced us to be thankful, to be appreciative during our last lunch. I wondered now if Helen was punishing me for not being thankful enough.

  I drove deeper into the city. The apartment buildings rose up on all sides. And then my cell phone, sitting exactly where I’d left it in the passenger’s seat, started to ring. I picked it up and looked at the caller ID.

  It was Elliot Hull.

  What in the hell could he want now? Did he know? Had he sensed something was wrong? I was willing to believe
almost anything now. This different world had different facts and different rules.

  The truth was that I was relieved that he was calling, grateful. I wanted to hear his voice to erase the echo of Peter: Hey, why haven’t you called? I’ve been waiting for your call. Did you get my messages?

  “Hello,” I said, pulling over into an empty parking spot.

  “I know I’m not supposed to call, but Peter is hitting golf balls at my house.” I heard him clattering around. I heard a muffled, “Holy shit!” And then his voice came through clearly again. “And he’s got a pretty fucking good swing!”

  “Golf balls? Into your house?”

  “Shit!” Elliot said, amid more clattering. “Yes, golf balls! He’s completely lost it. What the hell?”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. I’d seen Peter get drunk many times, and every once in a while drinking brought on a snide tone that could then turn verbally hostile. Although I’d never seen him act on it, I wasn’t surprised that he’d broken down. Golf balls, though? Hitting golf balls into Elliot’s house? This was my fault. Elliot shouldn’t have to get involved. I wondered if the woman was with him, if he’d been trying to have a nice evening with her alone and had been forced to explain this insanity. “I’ll come get him.”

  “Any ideas on why he might want to put all my windows out?” Elliot asked. “Two, by the way, so far. He’s gotten two windows.”

  “I told him.”

  Elliot was quiet a moment. “What exactly did you tell him?”

  I took a deep breath and spoke as quickly as possible. “Look, I know that you’re seeing someone right now and that you’ve moved on, just like last time, with Ellen Maddox, or backwards, in that case.”

  He immediately started saying, “Wait, wait. Slow down a minute.” But I didn’t even pause. I talked over his protests.

  “You know, you moved back to Ellen Maddox, really. But what I’m saying is that I told him that I’m in love with you, but not because I want to be with you. No. No. That’s not what I meant. But only because I don’t want secrets. There are too many secrets in the world. People are hoarding them everywhere. And I had to tell him. That’s all. This is about me and him. Not you. I’m so sorry. I’m hanging up. I’m not giving you a chance to talk. I’m just hanging up now because this is my problem with Peter, not yours, and not about you and me. So I’m hanging up. I’m coming over to collect Peter, but that’s it. I won’t bother you. I’m hanging up.”

  He was protesting more loudly now. “Wait, wait. Don’t hang up!” But I did anyway. I had to.

  I would learn later, much later, a sketchy version of what happened in between the time of Elliot’s call and when I arrived at his house. Peter started yelling obscenities. He sliced a ball and it popped off one of the neighbor’s shutters. The neighbor called Elliot on the phone and told him that he was going to call the cops if he didn’t get the maniac to settle down.

  Elliot went out to talk some sense into Peter. When he reached for the club in Peter’s hand, Peter threw a punch, and soon they were wrestling in the snow.

  That’s where I found them.

  The fight was vicious. Peter was drunk, but more athletic than Elliot, but Elliot was taking advantage of Peter’s sloppiness. Both were getting in some quick punches. Their bodies were rolling and pitching in a blur of motion, the fog of their breath bursting up from their mouths into the cold night air. Peter’s golf bag had tipped over. The golf clubs were splayed on the white lawn. A box of balls had tipped too, and the balls had rolled to the sidewalk where they sat like lost eggs. The angry neighbor was on his front stoop now, glowering at them in a sweatsuit with the hood’s drawstrings tightened up around his meaty face. A few other neighbors were peering out of lit-up windows. The snow was coming down faster now, the flakes bigger and wetter.

  I got out of my car and just stood there on the sidewalk, watching in stunned silence. Did I want Elliot to beat Peter up? I did, I think, for sleeping with Helen. But I didn’t mind Peter getting in a few jabs of his own—on Elliot who’d moved on to someone else so swiftly. Was that why I was frozen there? It was possible, but also I’d absorbed so much in one day. I was no longer living in the world I’d woken up in. I didn’t know what was expected of me here, how to act, what to say.

  Elliot finally got Peter’s button-down pulled up and over his head so that his arms were trapped and his chest bare. His skin was pale but reddened with spots that looked like they’d form bruises overnight. Elliot then pulled Peter in close to his body, his shoes slipping in the snow, and put him in a headlock.

  “You need to go home!” Elliot said breathlessly. “Just stop and go home!”

  “No truce!” Peter was shouting, reverting to the language of a sixth-grader. “No truce! I do not give up!”

  “Someone’s going to call the cops!” Elliot said, and he scanned the street, as if wondering if someone already had, and that’s when he saw me. Elliot loosened his grip and Peter jerked free and stood up. He tugged his shirt down violently, as if he were fighting himself now. They both stared at me. Elliot already had a puffed eye that was sealing shut. Peter had a little blood trickling from his nose.

  “Gwen,” Elliot said.

  “Tell him you love me!” Peter shouted.

  “Gwen,” Elliot said, walking toward me. “I’m not seeing anyone else. I don’t know what you were talking about on the phone.” I wasn’t sure I could trust him or anyone. Nothing made any sense.

  Peter caught up to him before he could get too close and shoved him. “Get your own goddamn wife!” he said. “You lousy fucker!”

  “Hey,” Elliot said, putting his finger in Peter’s face. “Don’t start again.”

  “You slept with Helen,” I said to Peter. This was a simple sentence, all that I could manage. He was about ten feet away and I was speaking softly.

  “What?” he said. “Helen?”

  “You slept with her,” I said.

  “Did she just say that?” He laughed and spun around.

  “It’s true,” I said. “Admit it.”

  “I’m not admitting to that!” he said. “That’s horse-shit.” He started to pick up his golf clubs then, but lacked balance and fell to one knee. He staggered quickly back up.

  “Just tell her the truth,” Elliot said, staring at the ground, his arms folded on his chest.

  I looked at Elliot sharply. “Why don’t you sound surprised?” I asked him.

  He looked up and then back down at the ground. “Because he told me,” he said.

  “You knew? For how long?”

  “He doesn’t know anything!” Peter said, holding a club by its foot and pointing its handle at Elliot. “You don’t know anything, do you?”

  “He told me that day in the golf cart,” Elliot said.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “How could I?” he said. “I would have just been the old boyfriend who was trying to break you two up. He’d have denied it. It would have been his word against mine. It was a trap. Plus,” he said, “it wasn’t my secret to tell.”

  “You should have told me,” I said, wiping the wet snow angrily from my face. “I feel like an idiot.”

  “It isn’t true anyway,” Peter said, walking toward me, his golf bag on one shoulder. I noticed he was wearing his father’s spikes again. Had he put them on for this occasion? “I didn’t sleep with Helen. I don’t even like Helen. I love you.” He started walking toward me. “Tell Elliot you love me,” he said in a slurred whisper. “C’mon, sweetie. Tell him now and we can all go home.”

  I stared at the two of them.

  “Gwen,” Elliot said. “I wanted to tell you, but I couldn’t.”

  “You should have thrown yourself into the trap!” I shouted. “You should have told me! What’s the matter with a little honesty?”

  I jogged to my car and got in. My hands were shaking as I shoved the key into the ignition. Finally, I managed to get the car in gear and drove off, leaving them standing there. In my rearvie
w mirror, I saw Peter listing to one side under the weight of his golf bag, and Elliot, who turned around and punched him, one last time, in the stomach. Peter folded at the waist. And Elliot stuffed his hands in his pockets and walked toward his front door in the steady snow.

  I DROVE TO MY FATHER’S house. It was late. The house was dark. I had no key and so had to knock on the front door, like a stranger, and maybe that was fitting. I suddenly felt like I was surrounded by strangers and that I was a stranger to myself. I saw my father’s bedroom light turn on and then the porch lamp. He opened the door with the old-fashioned chain still in place. When he saw it was me, he quickly shut the door to unlock it, and then opened it wide.

  “Come in, come in!” he said, peeking out at the snowy yard at my back. He was wearing a blue flannel bathrobe that looked ancient. It struck me as a widower’s bathrobe. Wasn’t that something that wives bought husbands when they’d worn out the old one? No one had told my father it was time to retire this one. It seemed intimate to see him like this—his skinny legs and bare feet sticking out from beneath the robe. I thought about saying that I shouldn’t have disturbed him, excusing myself, and leaving. But where would I have gone?

  I walked into the living room. It was just the way I’d left it—the boxes with their popped-open lids, the stack of knitting books, the blanket on the floor. I didn’t explain why I was there, and my father didn’t ask. Instead he said, “Do you need to spend the night?”

  I nodded.

  “Do you want something warm to drink? I can make hot cocoa. I have some packets somewhere. Are you hungry?”

  “No,” I said. “I just want to lie down. I’ll just sleep on the sofa.”

  “Why not in your old room?” he asked. “Let me strip the bed and get fresh sheets on it for you.”

  “No,” I said, sitting down on the couch. “Here’s fine. It’s all I can manage.” I lay down and curled up.