The Wife

by S.P. Cervantes

  Lee answers right away.

  Lee: Your ears must have been burning.

  Me: Don’t you have anything better to do than talk about me :)

  Lee: Frank is the one who can’t stop talking about you.

  Me: Why? And why are you with Frank?

  Lee: We’re on a date. Don’t worry, I won’t let him get past first base.

  Me: Please tell me you’re not going to start dating him. Please, please please.

  It takes far too long for Lee to respond. My mind swirls with embarrassment at the things Lee could be saying to Frank about me and my marriage. Most importantly, I only hope she doesn’t bring up Jamie to Frank. I don’t know how much he actually knows about us. Just when I’m about to text her again, I notice a body pressed up against the full-length glass window of Mike’s building, being held there by a large figure. I instinctively lock the car doors, and dial Mike’s phone, only to remember that he’s left it in the car when it rattles in the drink holder. Was I witnessing a robbery?

  Just when I start to dial 911, I see Mike emerge from the building, looking extremely disheveled and upset. Was that his body up against the wall that way? It couldn’t have been. I jump out of the car and run over to Mike, who instantly shoos me away.

  “Get in the fucking car,” he seethes at me.

  I know better than to ask more questions right now and hop in the car, locking the doors again as soon as Mike is in the driver’s seat and drives away as fast as he can.

  “Where’s your computer, Dad?” Colin asks.

  Mike gives me a look that says he will explain later and turns to our son. “I forgot my keys at home, buddy. The office was closed.” He’s breathing heavy and I can hear the fear in his voice.

  “But Dad, you promised I could play Terarria on your laptop!” Colin begins to protest, clearly unaware at the confrontation his father just experienced.

  “Jesus, Colin, relax. You play that damn game too much anyway. Go out and ride your bike or do something active. Just stop talking to me right now!” Mike never loses his patience with the boys and it makes me even more worried about what I just witnessed.

  “You can use any other computer in the house, Colin, alright? Let’s just get home and not have an argument before we set foot through our door,” I chime in, trying to cool everyone down.

  “Look who’s talking. All you and Dad ever do is fight.” Colin’s words made it seem as if acid was thrown on my heart.

  “Don’t you dare speak to your mother that way,” Mike says defensively.

  “Why? You always yell at her or tell everyone how mean she is,” Liam interjects.

  I look over at Mike in shock that our children are more aware of our problems than we thought. We thought we had been experts at protecting them from our troubles. My fears about the encounter I just witnessed shift to fears that I haven’t protected my children from my failure.

  “That’s enough from both of you,” Mike scolds them as he pulls into the driveway. I am unable to say anything. “Get out of the car and go straight to your rooms.”

  The boys jump out of the car, slamming the doors behind them for effect, as I sit, speechless, next to Mike. Once they’re out of sight, he slams his fist against the tan leather steering wheel.

  “I don’t know what to say about any of this.” I twist my hands in my lap, trying to hold myself together.

  Mike changes his demeanor drastically from the frantic anger that just exploded from him and gives me a nonchalant shrug. “They’re just trying to piss us off. They’ll be fine.”

  I don’t believe that excuse for a second. Clearly the boys are affected by the deterioration of our family, but I have other questions for Mike that aren’t as obvious. “What happened at the office then? Was someone attacking you, Mike? Is there something going on?” My thoughts instantly go to wondering whether it was perhaps his ex-lover’s husband or boyfriend seeking revenge. He said there are things he can’t tell me. Is he in some sort of trouble that I don’t know about?

  “What are you talking about?” He immediately realizes that I saw him pressed up against the window when I give him an annoyed look because he’s trying to hide something from me. “Oh, that was nothing. We were playing around.” He begins to open the car door, unable to make eye contact with me.

  He’s lying.

  I grab his shoulder. “Stop lying to me! Just tell me what that was about. You were a mess when you came back out to the car. Your face was red and you looked like you had just been roughed up!” I yell, too pissed to let him talk his way out of this.

  He gets out of the car and he bends down to look at me in frustration. “Alexa, it was nothing. We were joking around. Either stop it with all your questions or get the hell out of my house. You choose.”

  He walks away and doesn’t look back. I sit in the car and cry. There is little hope left to keep our marriage together.

  Mike telling me to stop asking questions or to leave was a moment of clarity that I’ve been waiting for. After he admitted to cheating on me and promised to try to make it work, I chose to believe him. I chose to give him another chance, even though he violated my trust and respect for him. Yet, simple questions about why someone had him pinned up against a wall were the reason he snaps from wanting to try to make us work to ultimatums.

  Each day that passes, I find I’m losing myself more and more and I’m left grasping at the remnants of my marriage helplessly. The times that I should be focusing on my kids and my job are constantly being overshadowed by my sadness and discontent in my marriage. The question is no longer did he cheat; it’s turned to when is he going to cheat again? That constant question isn’t something that I want to be thinking, but the way he sat there and lied so easily to me about the altercation the other night, the more I’m left wondering when the lies will ever end. I think about how many other times before he could have been lying to me. Was this who Mike has always been, or has he changed into this stranger?

  I walk into the coffee shop and see Lee and Rita waiting for me; I need to close my eyes for a moment to gather myself before facing the firing squad that is no doubt ready to attack. When I had dinner with Lee, she did everything in her power to convince me to finally suck it up and leave Mike, and she didn’t even know that he told me about his affair yet. I sat there and defended myself and Mike, although I had just learned the truth about his infidelities only hours before. I was actually glad when Jamie and Frank arrived, just for the simple fact that their presence would actually make her shut up about it all. Now, the smiles on their faces tell me I’m in for something.

  “You’re late,” Rita says jokingly, trying to lighten the mood with sarcasm.

  “Hi girls, how is everyone?” I ask, trying to keep the conversation focused on anything but me.

  “I couldn’t be better.” Lee takes a sip seductively on her straw, in her usual dramatic fashion.

  “I’m guessing things have been going well with Frank?” Although I’d rather do anything but talk about things related to Jamie right now, I’m glad that the focus is at least off me.

  “It’s all she’s been talking about all week.” Rita sighs playfully. “Frank is so kind. Frank is so funny. Frank is so sexy. I’m seriously going to barf if I hear anything else about Frank.”

  “Fine.” Lee flicks her straw at Rita. “How was your trip?” she asks, extending each word.

  I try to hide my true feelings and the disastrous way it ended and smile brightly. “It was great. The kids were swimming and playing nonstop, and Mike had magnificent dinners and nights planned for us. It was a great time.”

  I notice Lee and Rita look at each other and notice how quickly their faces changed. Their sarcasm and banter was as much as a mask as my smiles have been. There’s something wrong and they aren’t able to hide it.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask as they both seem to be trying to silently urge each other to break whatever news they have to me.

  Rita looks down at her cup regretful
ly and then back up at me with tears in her eyes. She places her hand on mine and gives it a light squeeze. “I want to start by telling you I have gone back and forth about whether or not to come to you about this. I have really tried not to get involved in what’s been going on between you and Mike and be a support for you. I know how much you value marriage and your family. It’s one of the things I respect most about you.” She closes her eyes and shakes her head as if she’s pushing away a horrible thought.

  “I appreciate your support during this time. Rita, I really do. You’ve always listened to me and been an ear instead of pushing me to leave him. I need someone like that in my life.” I look over to Lee, who knows her approach has been quite different, and the shame in her eyes makes me pause and take her hand too. “I love you both and don’t know how I would get through this time in my life without you here at my side to hold me up in these times when I feel so down.”

  I sit back in my seat and prepare myself for what Rita is about to say, although I’m sure it’s not going to come as much of a surprise for me. Nothing does these days, it seems.

  Rita keeps looking to Lee as if she can’t find the words. Lee shakes her head at Rita. “This one’s on you, Rita.”

  She sighs again sullenly. “Pete and I have been fighting lately over this, and it’s the only reason I didn’t say anything right away. He told me something that he made me promise to keep to myself, but I just can’t. I can’t keep this from you after watching everything you’ve done for the bastard and seeing the crappy way he treats you and makes you feel like you’re some crazy person. Every time you ask him about work or his late nights, he jumps down your throat and acts like you’re accusing him of something, I’ve seen it, and I don’t like it. It’s like he tries to make sure Pete and I witness a fight every time we’re together so he can make you seem like you’re a jealous wife.”

  I nod, trying to hold back the tears. I hadn’t realized that my crappy marriage wasn’t only affecting me and my kids, but now even my friends. “Rita, I would never want anything in my life to get in between you and Pete. He is nothing like Mike and never will be. I promise that whatever you tell me will be kept between us. It will just be another thing on my list to help me make my decision.”

  “Okay,” she says, mentally preparing herself to what she’s about to say. “About two weeks ago, Mike was golfing with Pete when he kept getting phone calls that were interrupting their game. It was really pissing Pete off.”

  “Jesus, Rita, she doesn’t give a shit—just spit it out.” Lee’s nervousness makes me even more edgy.

  Rita shakes her head and continues, as if each thought is too painful to put into words.

  I reach over and take her hand. “It’s okay. I can take it.” It’s only then that I wonder whether I should tell her that I know Mike cheated on me, but she continues and I let her.

  “Anyway, the more the day went on, the more irritated Mike became by the phone calls and Pete got about him answering them. By the time they were in the clubhouse, Mike was a belligerent mess, and when his phone rang again, Pete took the phone and answered it himself to find a woman on the other line.” Her face winced as if in pain. “Before Pete could identify himself, the woman…” She pauses again. “She said that she couldn’t wait to pleasure him later and make everything all better. Pete told me that Mike has been hooking up with other women for a while, but he seems to be seeing someone serious now, and that’s why he told me about this.”

  “Pack your things and get out, Alexa. You have the proof: he’s been a dick forever. You’ve done enough. You’re freaking Mother Teresa as far as I’m concerned.” Lee’s face was red with anger.

  I sit back in my chair and take in everything she’s saying. The incessant calls Mike received on our weekend all seemed to aggravate and upset him. This I know. The fact that he had been cheating on me I also knew. But something about that message made me almost as pissed as the information about him cheating on me does. It’s the fact that whoever the woman was, she also knew about the things in his life that were upsetting him, and I still knew nothing. Mike said things were over between him and whoever that woman was, but that simple sentence makes me doubt it even more now.

  I look at my friends and take their hands in mine. “Thank you for telling me. I promise I won’t let Mike know that you said anything.” I aim my next remark at Lee. “Please just give me time. I need more time to make sure that leaving him is what I really want. I need to know it’s what’s best for the boys.”

  I walk away from them and the doubt on their faces is mirrored in my heart. Thinking about everything I’ve learned in the past few days makes me realize that as much as I tried to build our marriage on a solid foundation of respect and honesty, it’s only been built on a weak mound of lies that is eroding away.

  “It’s just a big misunderstanding.” Mike tossed his suitcase into the back of my beat-up Jeep and kissed my forehead. “They needed a scapegoat and as president of the fraternity, I had to take the fall.”

  I was shocked by how calm he seemed about being kicked out of his fraternity for money laundering. “Mike, this could affect your future! Don’t take the fall for something Paul or Buddy got into. You’ve worked too hard. What if they decide to press charges?”

  Mike pulled me into his arms, folding me into his soft NYU sweatshirt. “My dad’s already taken care of everything. No one is pressing charges. It’s not even going on my permanent record. My dad made a hefty contribution; I stepped down; all will be forgotten by tomorrow, I’m sure.”

  Mike’s confidence always settled me, but tonight was different. I only learned about all of this last night, and his dad already had this all worked out? Something was up. “How long have you known about this?”

  Mike took my hand in his, walked me over to the side of my car and picked me up, placing me in the passenger’s seat, and ignored my questions, like he always did. “I don’t want you worrying your beautiful face about this for another second. I love you. I will always protect you from shit like this. Let’s just go back to your place…our place now…and forget any of this happened.”

  He leaned into my neck, kissing me in the place he knew unhinges me, and slithered his hand between my legs.

  “Why do you always try to distract me with sex?” I asked playfully.

  “Because it always works.” His voice filled with desire as he pressed himself between my legs and placed one last deep kiss on my begging lips. “Now let’s get you home and out of those clothes, roomie.”

  Mike was sound asleep next to me, exhausted from an evening of lovemaking, providing the perfect distraction from the stresses that filled the day. My mind couldn’t stop racing with questions and doubt about Mike’s situation. I wish, just this once, he wouldn’t have put his friends first and just thought about his future. Although I had no doubt his dad would be able to make this all disappear in time, it still bothered me that Mike’s name would be linked to something like this in the first place. Mike was known by everyone to be an honest person. It was a large part of why I was starting to fall in love with him. Honesty was the most important thing to me when I started a relationship with him, and Mike was often honest to a fault. He had proved himself time and time again to be one of the most honest people I’ve ever met, and now his named was tarnished with an ugly crime of dishonesty.

  It’s true, most of the other brothers in his fraternity would not have gotten as lucky as Mike, and none of them had a father who was attorney general of New York, like Mike’s was. Even so, I didn’t want people questioning his integrity, and I didn’t like that a little voice in my head was doing it too.

  The stuffiness of the room made me feel claustrophobic. I slid out of the bed, trying my best not to wake Mike, and grabbed a sweater that was tucked away in the corner before I snuck out the door. I loved going to the rooftop of my apartment building in Manhattan on cool spring nights and looking at the bustling city below. It made my tiny apartment feel a part of so muc
h more. It was one of the few places I felt at peace. The instant I opened the white metal door, I felt a wave of calm come over me as the warm breeze ruffled my hair in a lively way that made me smile. I walked across the roof, admiring the herb garden my best friend Lee had started only a few weeks ago. She always amazed me with her determination to improve everything she touched.

  When I met Lee in my junior year in an art history class, I automatically assumed she was into interior design just like me. Lee had the most fabulous, long, wavy blonde hair that was the opposite of my mousy brown, frizzy locks, and legs that went on for miles that were always tanned to perfection. She wore all the current styles and was a master at talking politics to anyone she came across. She intimidated me at first, but immediately broke down that wall with her witty comments and magnetic personality. When she was around, I was happy, and at that time when we met, things in my life were anything but happy. Instead of daydreaming of Jamie and whether he was ever coming back to me during class, Lee reminded me what life was all about. She reminded me that in order to be happy, you have to think happy. Once she knew how my boyfriend, the man who promised me that I was his one love, forever, left me and never talked to me again, she made it her mission to make sure that she gave me plenty to think happy about.

  Every class that year, Lee would describe the perfect location and design plan to house each painting or artist we learned about in class, and as much as she always made me laugh, she was also always spot on. It wasn’t until our first night out together in Riker Island celebrating the end of the semester, getting drunk on Long Island Iced Teas, that she admitted she was actually an engineering major, and art and interior design were only hobbies. Stress relievers, she called it. That solidified it for me. Lee was my best friend. Any woman who looked like she did, and had a heart and brain like hers, was not someone I was ever going to let go of.

  I picked up a watering can, and sprinkled the basil and rosemary because they looked a little dry, and went over to my favorite chair that overlooked Rocco’s Diner. I always made up stories to go along with the people I watched come in and out of the all-night restaurant, and most nights there were plenty of characters to choose from. Everyone came through those doors, from college kids up late night partying to businessmen coming for a bite after a long night at the office to the only place open this time of night—or was it morning?