The Other Mrs (ARC)

by Mary Kubica

  After she left the memorial service, I followed the ex-wife

  in my car. I did a U-turn in the street, tailing the red Jeep by

  thirty feet as she drove the three blocks to the ferry. If Court-

  ney knew I was there, following her, there was no reaction. I

  sat, idling in the street for ten minutes or so. She sat in her car, on the phone the whole while.

  When the ferry arrived, she pulled her car onto the ship.

  Moments later, she disappeared out to sea. She was gone. And

  yet she stayed with me, in my mind. She’s with me still. I can’t

  stop thinking about her. About Jeffrey. About their altercation,

  about their embrace.

  I’m also thinking about Imogen. About her silhouette in the

  corner of my bedroom at night.

  Will runs his fingers through his hair, his version of a comb. I

  hear his voice, talking over the sound of the bathroom fan. He’s

  telling me that this evening he’s taking Tate to a Legos event at

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  the public library. They’re going with another boy from school,

  one of Tate’s playdate buddies. Him and his mother. Jessica is

  her name, one Will casually drops in the middle of the conver-

  sation, and it’s the casualness of it, the familiarity of her name

  that rubs me the wrong way, makes me forget for just this mo-

  ment about Jeffrey and his ex, about Imogen.

  For years, Will has been the scheduler of playdates for our

  boys. Before, it never bothered me. If anything, I felt grateful

  Will picked up the task in my absence. After school, the boys’

  classmates and their mothers would come around to the condo

  when I was at work. What I imagined was the boys disappear-

  ing down the hall to play while Will and some woman I didn’t

  know sat around my kitchen table, hobnobbing about the other

  mothers at the elementary school.

  I never saw these women. I never wondered what they looked

  like. But everything is different since the affair. Now I find my-

  self overthinking these things.

  “Just the four of you?” I ask.

  He tells me yes, just the four of them. “But there will be other

  people there, Sadie,” he says, trying to be reassuring, and yet it

  comes off as sarcastic. “It’s not like it’s a private event, just for us.”

  “Of course,” I say. “What will you be doing there?” I ask,

  lightening my tone, trying not to sound like a harpy, because I

  know how much Tate loves Legos.

  Will tells me that they’ll be building something from those

  tiny bricks I find scattered all over the house, erecting rides and machines that move. “Tate can’t wait. And besides,” he says,

  turning away from the mirror to face me, “it might do Otto,

  Imogen and you some good, a few hours alone. Bonding time,”

  he calls it, and I harrumph at that, knowing there will be no

  bonding between Otto, Imogen and me tonight.

  I step past him. I move from the bathroom and into the ad-

  joining bedroom. Will follows along. He sits on the edge of the

  bed, pulling on a pair of socks as I get dressed.

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  The days are getting colder. The coldness leaks into the clinic

  through the door and windows. The walls are porous, the doors

  to the clinic always opening and closing. Every time a patient

  walks in or out, the cold air comes with them.

  I dig into a heaping pile of laundry, searching for a brown

  cardigan, one of those versatile things that goes with nearly ev-

  erything. The sweater isn’t mine. It belonged to Alice. It was in

  the home when we arrived. The sweater is well-loved, worn,

  which is half the reason I like it. It’s slightly misshapen, covered in pills, with a wide, ribbed shawl collar and big apron pockets

  I can sink my hands into. Four faux shell buttons line the front

  of it. It’s close-fitting because Alice was smaller than me.

  “Have you seen my sweater?” I ask.

  “What sweater?” Will asks.

  “The brown one,” I say. “The cardigan. The one that was

  Alice’s.”

  Will says he hasn’t seen it. He doesn’t like the sweater. He

  always thought it was odd that I laid claim to the sweater in

  the first place. Where’d you get that? he asked the first time I appeared with it on.

  The closet. Upstairs, I said. It must have been your sister’s.

  Real y? he asked. You don’t think that’s kind of—I don’t know—

  morbid? Wearing a dead person’s clothes?

  But before I could respond, Tate was asking what morbid

  meant and I left the room to avoid that conversation, leaving it

  to Will to explain.

  Now I find another sweater in the laundry to wear, and slip

  it over the blouse. Will sits, watching until I’m through get-

  ting dressed. Then he rises from the bed and comes to me. He

  wraps his arms around my waist and tells me not to worry about

  Jessica. He leans in, whispers into my ear, “She doesn’t stand a chance next to you,” making a poor attempt at humor, telling

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  her teeth are missing, that spit comes flying out of her mouth

  when she talks.

  I force a smile. “She sounds lovely,” I say. Though still I won-

  der why they have to drive together, why they can’t just meet

  at the library.

  Will leans further into me, breathes into my ear, “Maybe after

  the Legos event, after the kids are in bed, you and I can have

  some bonding time too.” And then he kisses me.

  Will and I haven’t been intimate since the affair. Because

  every time he touches me, all I can think of is her and I bristle as a result, nipping any suggestion of intimacy in the bud.

  I couldn’t stake my life on it, but I was sure she was a student,

  some eighteen- or nineteen-year-old girl. She wore lipstick, that

  I knew. Hot-pink lipstick and underwear that was flimsy and

  small, leaving it in my bedroom when she left, which meant that

  she had the audacity to not only sleep with a married man but

  to parade around sans underwear. Two things I would never do.

  I often wondered if she called him Professor, or if to her, he was always Will. Or maybe Professor Foust, but I doubted that somehow. That seemed far too formal for a man you’re sleeping with, even if he is twenty years your senior, a father of two

  with traces of gray in his hair.

  I thought a lot about audacious young women. About what

  one might look like. Pixie cuts came to mind, as did low-cut

  blouses, midriff bared; shorts so short the pockets hung out from

  below. Fishnet stockings, combat boots. Dyed hair.

  But maybe I was wrong about that. Maybe she was a self-dep-

  recating young woman, shy, lacking in self-respect. Maybe the

  marginal attention of a married man was all she had going for

  her, or maybe she and Will had a connection that went beyond

  se
x and to a like-minded desire to save the world.

  In which case I think she did call him Professor Foust.

  I never asked Will what she looked like. I did, and at the same

  time didn’t, want to know. In the end I decided that ignorance is

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  bliss and never asked. He would have just lied anyway and told

  me there wasn’t another woman. That it was only me.

  If it wasn’t for the boys, our marriage may have ended in di-

  vorce after the affair. I’d suggested it once, that maybe Will and

  I would be better off if we got a divorce, that the boys would

  be better off.

  “God, no,” Will told me when I’d suggested it. “No, Sadie,

  no. You said that would never happen to us. That we’d be to-

  gether forever, that you would never let me go.”

  If I said that, I didn’t remember. Either way, that’s the type

  of ridiculous nonsense people say when they’re falling in love; it doesn’t pass muster in a marriage.

  There’s a small part of me that blamed myself for the affair.

  That believed I’d been the one to push Will into the arms of an-

  other woman, because of who I am. I blamed my career, which

  requires that I be detached. That detachment, the absence of

  an emotional involvement, works its way into our marriage

  at times. Intimacy and vulnerability aren’t my strong suit, nor

  have they ever been. Will thought he could change me. Turns

  out he was wrong.

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  Sadie

  When I pull into the clinic parking lot, I’m grateful to find

  it empty. Joyce and Emma will be here soon, but for now it’s

  only me. My tires skid on the pavement as I make a sharp left

  turn into my spot, searching the adjacent street for signs of high

  beams.

  I step from the car and make my way across the parking lot.

  This early in the day, the world is asphyxiated by fog. The air

  around me is murky, like soup. I can’t see what’s five feet in

  front of me. My lungs are heavy, and suddenly I don’t know for

  certain if I’m alone or if there’s someone out there in the fog,

  watching me. Standing just beyond those five feet where I can’t

  see. A chill creeps up my spine and I shiver.

  I find myself jogging to the door, plunging the key into the

  lock to let myself in. I push the door closed behind me, and turn

  the dead bolt before making my way inside. I move down the

  narrow hall and to the reception area, Emma’s domain.

  Before I arrived, there was another doctor in my place, a long

  time resident of the island who went on maternity leave and

  never came back. Joyce and Emma often stand and pass baby

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  photos around and lament how much they miss having Amanda

  here. They hold me responsible for her leave, as if it’s my fault

  she had that baby and decided to give motherhood a go.

  What I’ve come to discover is that the island residents don’t

  take well to newcomers. Not unless you’re a child like Tate or

  gregarious like Will. It takes a rare breed to choose to live on an island, isolated from the rest of the world. Many of the residents

  who aren’t retired have simply chosen seclusion as a way of life.

  They’re self-reliant, autonomous, and also insular, moody, obsti-

  nate and aloof. Many are artists. The town is littered with pot-

  tery shops and galleries because of them, making it cultured but

  also pretentious.

  That said, community is important because of the isolation

  that comes with island living. The difference between them and

  me is that they chose to be here.

  I run a hand along the wall, feeling for the light switch. The

  lights above me come to life with a hum. There, on the wall

  before me, sits a large dry erase calendar, Dr. Sanders’s and my

  work schedule. Emma’s brainchild. The schedule is arbitrary

  and irregular; Dr. Sanders and I are not slated to work the same

  days from week to week. If there’s any method to the madness,

  I can’t see it.

  I go to the calendar. The ink is smudged, but still I see what

  it is that I’m looking for. My name, Foust, written under the date December first. The same day Mr. Nilsson supposedly saw

  Morgan Baines and me arguing. The same day Mr. Nilsson says

  I savagely tore a handful of hair from the woman’s head.

  According to Emma’s calendar, on December first I was

  scheduled to work a shift that spanned nine hours, from eight

  in the morning to five that night. In which case, I was here at the clinic when Mr. Nilsson swears I was outside the Baines’s home.

  I find my phone in my bag and snap a photo of it for proof.

  I sit down at the L-shaped desk. There are notes stuck to it.

  A reminder for Emma to order more printer ink. For Dr. Sand-

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  ers to call a patient back with test results. One of our patients

  is missing her doll. Her mother’s phone number is on the desk,

  with a request to call if the doll is found. The computer pass-

  word is there too.

  I revive the computer. Our files are stored on medical soft-

  ware. I don’t know for certain that Mr. Nilsson is a patient of

  the clinic, but nearly everyone on this island is.

  There are any number of eye disorders that affect the elderly,

  from presbyopia to cataracts and glaucoma, all the way to macu-

  lar degeneration, one of the leading causes of blindness in older

  adults. It’s possible Mr. Nilsson suffers from one of these, and

  that’s the reason he thought he saw me with Mrs. Baines. Be-

  cause he couldn’t see. Or maybe he’s begun to exhibit the early

  signs of Alzheimer’s disease and was confused.

  I open the computer program. I search for the medical re-

  cords of George Nilsson, and sure enough, they’re there. I’m

  quite certain this violates HIPAA laws, and yet I do it regard-

  less, even though I’m not Mr. Nilsson’s physician.

  I scan his medical records. I come to discover that he’s dia-

  betic. That he takes insulin. His cholesterol is high; he takes

  statins to keep it in check. His pulse and blood pressure are

  fine for a man his age, though he suffers from kyphosis, which

  I already knew. Mr. Nilsson is a hunchback. It’s painful and

  disfiguring, an offshoot of osteoporosis seen far more often in

  women than men.

  None of this interests me.

  What I find surprising is that Mr. Nilsson’s vision is fine. Dr.

  Sanders notes no concerns about Mr. Nilsson’s cognitive abili-

  ties. As far as I can tell, he’s of sound mind. His mental facili-

  ties aren’t failing him and he’s not going blind, which takes me

  right back to where I began.

  Why did Mr. Nilsson lie?

  I close the program. I move the mouse to the internet, double


  clicking. It opens before me. I type in a name, Courtney Baines,

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  and only as I press Enter does it occur to me to wonder if she’s

  still a Baines or if, after the divorce, she reverted to a maiden

  name. Or maybe she’s remarried. But there’s no time to find out.

  From down the hall, the back door opens. I have just enough

  time to X out of the internet and step back from the desk be-

  fore Joyce appears.

  “Dr. Foust,” she says, far too much animosity in her tone for

  eight o’clock in the morning. “You’re here,” she tells me as if

  this is something I don’t already know. “The door was locked.

  I didn’t think anyone was here.”

  “I’m here,” I say, more perky than I mean to be. “Wanted to

  get a head start on the day,” I explain, realizing she’s as easily put off when I’m early as when I’m late. I can do no right in her eyes.

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  Mouse

  Once upon a time there was a woman. Her name was Fake

  Mom. That wasn’t her real name, of course, but that’s what

  Mouse called her, though only ever behind her back.

  Fake Mom was pretty. She had nice skin, long brown hair,

  and a big, easy smile. She wore nice clothes, like collared shirts

  and sparkly tops, which she’d tuck into the waistband of her

  jeans so that it didn’t look sloppy like when Mouse wore jeans.

  She always looked put together in a way that Mouse did not.

  She always looked nice.

  Mouse and her father didn’t wear nice clothes except for when

  it was Christmas or when her father was going to work. Mouse

  didn’t think nice clothes were comfortable. They made it hard

  to move. They made her arms and legs feel stiff.

  Mouse didn’t know about Fake Mom until the night she ar-

  rived. Her father had never mentioned her and so Mouse got to

  thinking he probably met Fake Mom that very day he brought

  her home. But Mouse didn’t ask and her father didn’t say.

  The night she arrived, Mouse’s father came into the house

  the same way he always did when he’d been gone. Mouse’s fa-

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  ther usually worked from their home, in the room they called