Or maybe the dry cleaner closed two years ago. It all runs together.
During the same time, Millicent had been keeping Lindsay alive. Holding her captive.
The images running through my mind range from disturbing to barbaric. I envision the kinds of things I have heard about in the news, when women are found after years of being held captive by some deranged man. I have never heard of a woman doing this. And as a man, I cannot imagine doing this myself.
I leave the kids at home and drive to the open house where Millicent is working. It’s just a few blocks from ours; the drive takes minutes. Two cars are out front, hers and one other, an SUV.
I wait.
Twenty minutes later, she comes out of the house with a couple younger than us. The woman is wide-eyed. The man is smiling. As Millicent shakes their hand, she sees me out of the corner of her eye. I can feel her green eyes land on me, but she does not pause, does not break her fluid movement.
The couple walk back to their car. Millicent stays in front of the house, watching them go. She is wearing navy blue today, a slim skirt and heels, and a pin-striped blouse. Her red hair is straight and cut sharp at her jawline. It was much longer when we met and has grown shorter each year, as if she were committed to cutting off half an inch at regular intervals. It would not surprise me to learn that this is exactly what she has done. I am not sure anything about Millicent would surprise me now.
She waits until the SUV is gone before turning to me. I get out of my car and walk up to the house.
“You’re upset,” she says.
I stare at her.
She motions to the house. “Let’s go inside.”
We go in. The entryway is huge, the ceilings more than twenty feet high. New construction, just like ours, only this one is even bigger. Everything is open and airy, and it all leads to the great room, which is where we go.
“What did you do to her? For a year, what did you do?”
Millicent shakes her head. Her hair swings back and forth. “We can’t discuss this now.”
“We have to—”
“Not here. I have an appointment.”
She walks away from me, and I follow.
* * *
• • •
A FEW MONTHS after we married, Millicent got pregnant. It was a surprise in some ways, because we’d talked about waiting, but not completely. We were not always careful about using protection. We had discussed various methods of birth control but always came back to condoms. Millicent did not like taking anything with hormones. They all made her too emotional.
When Millicent was late, we both suspected she was pregnant. We confirmed it with a test at home and one at the doctor’s office. Later that night, I could not sleep. We sat up for a long time, sitting on our secondhand couch in our run-down rented house. I curled up next to her, my head on her stomach, and I started worrying about everything.
“What if we screw it up?” I said.
“We won’t.”
“We need money. How are we going—”
“We’ll manage.”
“I don’t want to just manage. I want to prosper. I want—”
“We will.”
I raised my head to look at her. “Why are you so sure?”
“Why are you so unsure?”
“I’m not,” I said. “I’m just—”
“Worried.”
“Yes.”
She sighed and gently pushed my head back down to her stomach. “Stop being silly,” she said. “We’ll be fine. We’ll be better than fine.”
Minutes earlier, I had felt more like a child than a soon-to-be father.
She made me stronger.
We have come a long way from those early days when we had no money. I had gone back to school to get my MBA, but I was halfway through when she got pregnant. We needed money, so I withdrew from the program and returned to what I know best: tennis. It was my one talent, the thing I could do better than anyone else I grew up with. The tennis court was where I shone. Not bright enough to go pro, but bright enough to start offering private lessons.
When I met Millicent, she had just finished a year of real estate classes and was studying to take the test. Once she passed, it took a while for her to start selling, but she did, even while pregnant, even when the kids were babies. And she was right—we made it work. We are better than fine. And as far as I know, we have not screwed up the kids yet.
Seven
NOW, AS WE stand in that empty house she is trying to sell, Millicent does not make me feel stronger. She makes me feel scared.
“It’s not okay,” I say. “None of this is okay.”
She raises one eyebrow. That used to be cute. “Now you’re growing a conscience?”
“I always had—”
“No. I don’t think you did.”
She is right again. I have never had a conscience when I’m trying to make her happy.
“What did you do to her?” I ask.
“It doesn’t matter. She’s gone.”
“Not anymore.”
“You worry too much. We’re fine.”
The doorbell rings.
“Work calls,” she says.
I walk with her to the door. She introduces me, tells them about my tennis skills. They are as young as the last couple and just as clueless.
I head home and drive right by our house.
First, I go to the Lancaster. Naomi is there, behind the counter, with many hours left on her shift.
Next, I go by the country club. I think about distracting myself by hanging out in the clubhouse, chatting with some of my clients while watching sports. Again, I don’t stop.
A number of other places run through my mind: a bar, a park, the library, a movie. I burn through almost half a tank of gas driving around, trying to pick a destination, before I head toward the inevitable.
Home.
It is where I always go.
When I open the door, I hear the sounds of my life. My family. The only real one I ever had.
Rory is playing a video game, electronic gunshots ringing through the house. Jenna is on the phone, talking, texting, and setting the table. The smell of dinner wafts throughout the great room, chicken and garlic and something with cinnamon. Millicent is behind the counter, putting it all together, and she always hums to herself while fixing meals. Her song choice is usually something ridiculous—a show tune, an aria, the latest pop music—and that’s another inside joke of ours.
She looks up and smiles, and it is real. I see it in her eyes.
We all sit down and eat together. Jenna entertains her mother and bores her brother with a play-by-play of her soccer game. Rory brags about his golf score, which today was better than anyone else under sixteen. On most days, our meals are like this. They are boisterous and loud, filled with tales of the day and the ease of us, we who have lived together forever.
I wonder how many times we did this while Lindsay was being held captive.
* * *
• • •
WHEN I GET into bed, I am surprised that hours have passed since I last thought about Lindsay, about the police, about what Millicent and I have done. Home, and all that goes with it, is that powerful to me.
My childhood was not the same. While I did grow up in a two-parent family in our nice Hidden Oaks house, with two cars, good schools, and a lot of extracurricular activities, we did not eat meals together like my own family does. And if we did happen to all eat at the same time, we ignored one another. My father read the paper, my mother stared off into space, and I ate as quickly as possible.
They showed up to watch me play tennis only if I was in a tournament and even then, only if I made it to the last round. Neither of my parents would have given up a Saturday for anything. Home was a place to sleep, a place to hold my stuff, a place
to leave as soon as possible. And I did. I left the country as soon as I could. It was impossible to imagine an entire life of feeling like a disappointment.
Though I am not sure it was me, not personally. If I had to guess, I was the one who was supposed to fix their marriage. After spending years thinking about it, running through my whole childhood again and again, I have come to the conclusion that my parents had me to try and fix their marriage. It didn’t work. And their disappointment became my failure.
I returned to Hidden Oaks only because my parents passed away. It was a freak accident, impossible to prevent or predict. They were driving down the highway, and a tire flew off a car ahead of them. It smashed through the front windshield of my father’s luxury sedan, and they both died. Gone, just like that. Still together, still undoubtedly miserable.
I never saw their bodies. The police said I wouldn’t want to.
It turned out my parents had far less money than they pretended to, so I came home to a house buried in mortgages and just enough money to pay an estate lawyer to settle everything and get rid of it. My parents weren’t even who I thought they were; they were frauds. They couldn’t afford to live in Hidden Oaks; they just pretended they could. I had no family left and didn’t know what one was.
Millicent built ours. I say it was her because it couldn’t have been me. I had no idea how to build a home or even how to get everyone together for a meal. She did. The first time Rory sat in a high chair, she pushed him up to the table, and we’ve been having meals together ever since. Despite the rising complaints from our growing kids, we still eat together.
When Millicent was pregnant with Jenna, she created our family rules. I called them Millicent’s Commandments.
Breakfast and dinner together, always.
No toys or phones at the table.
Allowances must be earned by doing chores around the house.
We will have movie night once a week.
Sugar will be limited to fruit, not fruit juice, and special occasions.
All food will be organic, as money allows.
Physical activity and exercise are encouraged. No, they’re mandatory.
Homework must be done before TV or video games.
The list made me laugh. She glared at me when I did laugh, though, so I stopped. By then, I knew the difference between when she was pretending to be mad and when her anger was genuine.
One by one, Millicent instituted her rules. Instead of turning the house into a prison, she gave the family structure. Both our kids play sports. They aren’t given money unless they work for it. We all sit down and watch a movie together once a week. They eat mostly organic and very few sugary foods. Their homework is always done by the time I get home from work. This is all because of Millicent.
The same Millicent who kept Lindsay alive for a year while doing god knows what to her.
* * *
• • •
I STILL CANNOT sleep. I get up and check on the kids. Rory is spread out on his bed, the covers thrown everywhere. When he turned fourteen, he no longer wanted dinosaurs painted on the walls. We redid the room, repainted it, refinished the furniture, and now it has one dark wall and three beige ones, a smattering of rock band posters, a dark stain on all the wooden furniture, and blackout curtains for when he sleeps. It looks like a child’s idea of an adult room. My son is becoming a teenager.
Jenna’s room is still orange. She has been obsessed with the color almost since birth. I think it comes from the color of Millicent’s hair. Jenna’s hair is like mine, dark brown with no sign of red. She has posters of female soccer players on her walls, along with a few musical groups and a male actor or two. I don’t know who they are, but whenever they are on TV, Jenna and her friends squeal. Now that she has reached the mature age of thirteen, all her dolls have been stuffed into her closet. She is into fashion, jewelry, and makeup she is not allowed to wear yet, along with a few stuffed animals and video games.
I walk around the house, checking all the doors and windows. I even go into the garage, looking for signs of rodents or bugs or water damage. I go out into the backyard and check the side gate. I do the same in the front yard, and then I go around the house again, relocking all the doors.
Millicent used to do this, especially after Rory was born. We were living in the run-down rental, and every night she walked around locking all the doors and windows. She would sit down for a few minutes, then get up and do it all over again.
“This isn’t a dangerous neighborhood,” I told her. “No one is going to break in.”
“I know.” She got up again.
Eventually, I decided to follow her. I fell in lockstep behind her and mimicked every move she made. First, I got the glare, the real one.
When I still didn’t stop, she slapped me.
“You’re not funny,” she said.
I was too stunned to speak. I had never been slapped by a woman. I hadn’t even been spanked, not even playfully. But since I had just mocked my wife, I threw up my hands and apologized.
“You’re only sorry because you got slapped,” Millicent said. She whipped around, went into the bedroom, and locked the door.
I spent the night thinking she was going to leave me. She was going to take my son and just go, because I had ruined everything. Extreme, yes. But Millicent does not put up with shit, period. Once, when we were dating, I said I would call her at a certain time, and I didn’t. She didn’t speak to me for more than a week. Wouldn’t even pick up the phone.
She came back to me that time. But I had no doubt that if I pissed Millicent off enough, she would just leave. And one time she did.
Rory was one and a half, Jenna was six months old, and Millicent and I spent all day, every day, juggling the kids and our jobs. One day, I woke up, exhausted again, and realized I was twenty-seven years old with a wife, two kids, and a brand-new mortgage.
All I wanted was a break. A temporary reprieve from all that responsibility. I went out with the guys, and I got so drunk they had to carry me into the house. When I woke up the next day, Millicent was gone.
She did not answer her phone. She was not at her office. Her parents said she was not with them. Millicent had only a few close friends, and none had heard from her. She had vanished, and she had taken my kids with her.
After three or four days, I was calling her phone every hour. I e-mailed, I texted, I became the most insane version of myself I had ever been. It wasn’t because I was worried about her. I knew she was fine, and I knew my children were fine. I went crazy because I thought she, they, were gone forever.
Eight days went by. Then she was back.
I had fallen asleep late, sprawled out on the unmade bed littered with pizza boxes and assorted plates, cups and random food packages. I woke up to a garbage-free bed and the smell of pancakes.
Millicent was in the kitchen, making breakfast. Rory was at the table, in his high chair, and Jenna was in her bassinet. Millicent turned to me and smiled. It was real.
“Perfect timing,” she said. “Breakfast is just about ready.”
I ran over to Rory and picked him up, holding him high in the air until he squealed. I kissed Jenna, who stared up at me with her dark eyes. I sat down at the table, afraid to speak. Afraid I was in a dream, and I didn’t want to wake up.
Millicent brought a full stack of pancakes over to the table. As she set them down, she leaned in close, so that her mouth was right next to my ear, and she whispered, “We won’t come back a second time.”
I have spent our entire marriage with no choice but to believe her. Yet I still slept with Petra.
And the other one.
Eight
WHEN I GET home from work, Millicent and the kids are there. Rory is lying on the couch, playing a video game. Millicent is standing over him, hands on hips, her face hard-set. Behind her, Jenna is moving her pho
ne back and forth, trying to take a selfie in front of the window. The TV screen casts a glow over all of them. For a second, they are frozen, a portrait of modern life.
Millicent’s glare shifts from Rory to me. Her eyes are the darkest of green.
“Do you know,” she says, “what our son did today?”
Rory’s baseball cap is pulled down low over his eyes and face. It doesn’t completely hide his smirk.
“What did our son do today?” I ask.
“Tell your father what you did.”
Jenna answers for him. “He cheated on a test with his phone.”
“Go to your room,” Millicent says.
My daughter walks out. She giggles all the way up the stairs and slams her bedroom door.
“Rory,” I say, “what happened?”
Silence.
“Answer your father.”
I do not like it when Millicent tells our son how to act toward me, but I say nothing.
Millicent snatches the game controller out of Rory’s hand. He sighs and finally speaks.
“It’s not like I’m going to be a botanist. If I ever need to know about photosynthesis, I’ll look it up, the same way I did today.” He looks at me, eyes wide, silently saying, “Right?”
I want to agree, because he is kind of right. But I’m the father.
“He’s been suspended for three days,” Millicent says. “He’s lucky he wasn’t kicked out.”
If they kicked him out of private school, he would be placed in a public school. I do not remind Millicent of this while she is doling out our son’s punishment.
“. . . no phone, no video games, no Internet. You come straight home after school, and, don’t worry, I’ll check.”
She whips around and clicks down the hall to the garage. She is wearing her flesh-colored heels.
My Lovely Wife Page 4