American Wife

by Curtis Sittenfeld

  It was indisputably a gorgeous day: sunny and still, the temperature in the low seventies. Leaning toward her bag, which was set on the flag-stone between our chairs, Jadey extracted two magazines and held them up side by side: an issue of People and an issue of Architectural Digest. “Which one?”

  I pointed at Architectural Digest, and she said, “I was hoping you’d say that, because I need to know what Princess Di is up to this week.”

  As we sat there, companionably turning pages, occasionally reading aloud a line or showing each other a picture—the ones I showed her were of fancy pillows or antique desks, and the ones she showed me were of Cher in some peculiar outfit, or Bruce Willis and Demi Moore holding hands—I was very tempted to repeat to her what Charlie had told me about buying the baseball team. I couldn’t, though, because he’d explicitly asked me not to, and I didn’t blame him. What I shared with Jadey she would surely share with Arthur, who would share it with John and their parents, and presumably all of Wisconsin and half of Washington, D.C., would soon know.

  The night before, when Charlie had told me, I’d said, “You’re not serious,” and he’d said, “I am, but we can talk about it in the morning.”

  “We don’t have enough money,” I said. I didn’t know how much it cost to buy a baseball team, but it had to be millions of dollars.

  “Good God, not me alone,” Charlie said. “It’s an investment group, and I’ll be managing partner. Managing partner of the Brewers has a nice ring to it, huh? I’ve just got to put up six or seven hundred grand, and the rest will come from the other fellows, namely Zeke Langenbacher and our very own Cliff Hicken. This is the opportunity of a life-time, Lindy, it’s what I was meant to do. My brothers’ll eat their hearts out.”

  Only six or seven hundred grand? But I didn’t respond—despite the surprising nature of what he was telling me, now that I knew his secret wasn’t anything troubling, I found myself teetering again on the edge of sleep.

  Sounding blissful, he said, “Think about going to all those games, and it counts as work.”

  Sleep was pulling me in, it was winning. I could hear him, but I was having difficulty forming a response. “Maybe you can find out what happened to Bernie Brewer,” I said. Bernie was the lederhosen-wearing, mustachioed mascot who had been retired a few years earlier. Before his retirement, whenever there was a home run, he would slide into a large beer mug, which had delighted Ella.

  Charlie chuckled, and I promptly fell asleep.

  In the morning, I woke shortly after six, and Charlie was lying on his side, his eyes shut, his breathing rhythmic and untroubled. “Are you awake?” I said, which was a disingenuous trick I occasionally used. When he didn’t respond, I asked again, and without opening his eyes, he shook his head. I said, “Did I dream that you and Zeke Langenbacher are buying the Brewers?”

  Our real conversation had not taken place until a few hours later, at breakfast. Ella was also in the kitchen but on the phone, talking to her friend Christine (that she would soon see Christine at the pool apparently made a check-in more rather than less urgent), and Charlie explained the situation: Because Monday was Memorial Day, they’d be making the eighty-four-million-dollar offer Tuesday; the family who currently owned the Brewers, the Reismans, knew the offer was coming and were prepared to accept it.

  Charlie was eating a piece of toast, and I was standing with my back to the sink. I said, “Well, congratulations.”

  “That sounded lukewarm.”

  “Not at all. I’m really excited for you, but what I don’t understand—if your investment group is offering eighty-four million dollars, how many people are in it? I’m not suggesting you put up more, but how can six or seven hundred thousand be enough unless there are dozens and dozens of investors?”

  In fact, parting with such a large portion of our savings did not seem insignificant. But it wasn’t really my money, it never had been, and even if we lost it, we’d still have a cushion. We’d never had a mortgage or car payments, and some years our biggest annual expense was Ella’s tuition—we’d be fine.

  “Oh, they didn’t come to me for my deep pockets,” Charlie said. “Compared to some of these dudes, we might as well be in the poor-house. No, a lot of what Langenbacher wants to do in bringing me on board is get the credibility and the connections of the Blackwell name, and frankly, I have no problem with that—I’m going into it with my eyes open. It’ll be a synergistic type of situation, good for the team, good for me, good for our family. They know I went to B-school, and they recognize what I have to offer.”

  “So what will being managing partner entail?”

  “Cheering for Robin Yount.” Charlie grinned. “Booing when the White Sox come to town. Finally memorizing the national anthem. No, there’s six other guys in Langenbacher’s investment group, counting Cliff—you’d know most of these fellows by name—and they’re all successful, obviously, but none of them are stars in the charisma department, if you catch my drift. They need a public face for the owners, whether it be with marketing or acting as a liaison to other leaders in the community. This is still top-secret, but one of the major goals is to build a new stadium ASAP, and you just know that’ll necessitate a lot of kid-glove negotiations.”

  “And you’re sure the Reisman family wants to sell the team?”

  “Oh, Lloyd Reisman is thrilled that locals are prepared to pony up. It would be devastating for the morale of this city if the Brewers got relocated again. You’re not worried about the money, are you? Because trust me, eighty-four million is a bargain. There’s no way we won’t get rich off the deal.”

  “I just never knew you had this kind of thing in mind,” I said. “You’re such an avid fan, obviously, but professional involvement—I’m surprised, is all.”

  “Now you know what Langenbacher and I were having our big talk about at the ballpark Sunday. You up for eighty-one games a year? Actually more, ’cause I’ll travel with the team sometimes.”

  I smiled. “Sure.” Could this be it, the thing that would bring Charlie peace? Being managing partner of a baseball team—and one that, for all Charlie’s loyalty to it, wasn’t particularly famous or winning—did not seem to me a recipe for a legacy. But given that I didn’t understand why a legacy mattered in the first place, perhaps it was predictable that I didn’t understand what might create one. If it was enough for Charlie, it was enough, more than enough, for me. Charlie was sitting at the kitchen table, and when I stepped toward him, he set his arms around my waist, hugging me. We were quiet, and Ella, who was still on the phone in the corner, said in an agitated tone, “But Bridget cheats at Marco Polo!”

  Charlie said, “Which do you think most people would rather do: coach high school baseball or own a baseball team?”

  “You’re not doing this just to impress your Princeton classmates, are you?”

  With his face pressed against my stomach, Charlie laughed. “Give me some fucking credit.”

  AT NOON, I walked around the perimeter of the pool to the snack bar to place our order for lunch: tuna sandwiches and Diet Cokes for Jadey and me, grilled cheeses and lemonade for Ella and Winnie. The snack bar was essentially a glorified shed with a kitchen in the back and a counter where you ordered; whenever an unexpected storm broke out, most people got in their cars and went home, but the most optimistic would cram into the front of the snack bar, hoping the rain would pass.

  When I carried our tray of food back to the lounge chairs, Ella and Winnie were huddled together on mine, both soaking wet. Seeing me approach, Winnie called, “Step lively, Aunt Alice—we’re starving!”

  I distributed the food, and Winnie said, “Mom, when I’m finished, can I have an ice-cream bar?”

  “Only if you bring me one, too,” Jadey said.

  We made the girls wait an hour before going back in the water, and they wandered off toward the grassy stretch at the north end of the pool; as soon as they were out of earshot, Jadey whispered, “When I was their age, I never waited.” Jadey,
like Charlie and Arthur, had grown up belonging to the country club, swimming in this pool. She’d told me that at her debutante ball, which had occurred at the club in June 1968, the theme had been “A Hawaiian Luau,” and she’d worn a strapless Hawaiian print dress and an orchid lei around her neck; guests had drunk fruit cocktails, eaten pineapple-and-shrimp kebabs and pig from a spit (it had roasted for hours ahead of time), and while there was a traditional twelve-piece dance band in the dining room, outside, a man with a ukulele had sat strumming on the high diving board.

  “You know who walked by when you were getting the food is Joe Thayer,” Jadey said. “I was thinking I should have an affair with him.”

  “Jadey, he’s going through a divorce.”

  “Oh, I love wounded men. I’ve often wished Arthur were more bruised by life. But what makes me wonder about Joe is that their daughter turned out so creepy, and she had to get it from somewhere, right?”

  “Megan’s not creepy,” I said. “She’s nine years old.”

  “I can’t stand that girl.”

  “Jadey!”

  “Honest to God, last year at Halcyon, I was walking down to the dock and dropped this huge tray of snacks and drinks—everything went everywhere—and I’m cursing and picking it all back up, and then I look over and she’s been watching me the whole time, not saying a word. She wasn’t even laughing, she was just staring at me.”

  “She’s a kid,” I protested.

  “She’s a sociopath. Plus, Winnie said Megan once offered her a poop sandwich.”

  I suppressed the urge to repeat Ella’s similar story. Poor Megan seemed to have enough problems without my gossiping about her, so I said, “I think you should talk to Arthur. I’m sure he knows you’re mad at him, but he probably doesn’t want to bring it up.”

  Jadey was adjusting the back of the lounge chair again, flattening it, and she made a harrumphing sound and rolled onto her stomach. Her face was turned to me, half of it pressed against the chair’s vinyl straps. She said, “Did you have any idea marriage would be so damn much work? God almighty.” She’d removed her sunglasses before lying down, and her eyes dropped shut. In a drowsy voice, she said, “You still worried about Chas and his whiskey?”

  “I may have been overreacting.”

  “I forgot to watch him at Maj and Pee-Paw’s, maybe ’cause I was so busy knocking back the vino myself. You have any of that merlot?”

  “I had a glass of the chardonnay.”

  She opened her eyes, propping herself up on her elbows. “A glass?” she repeated. “As in one glass?” When I nodded, she said, “Honey, maybe it’s not that Chas needs to drink less. Maybe it’s that you need to drink more.”

  WHEN I REMINDED Charlie on Monday morning that the Suttons were coming for lunch—Miss Ruby had called the evening before to confirm, and when I offered to pick them up, she’d said Yvonne would drive—he was shaving in front of the sink in our bathroom, and I was standing in the doorway. “No can do,” he said. “I’ve got an eleven o’clock tee time with Zeke and Cliff.”

  “Charlie, I told you about this over a week ago.”

  “Lindy, we’re making the offer to the Reismans tomorrow. With eighty-four mill at stake, don’t you think it’d be wise for us to dot some I’s and cross some T’s?”

  “That’s what you’ll be doing on the golf course?” I folded my arms in front of me. “Don’t make me be a nag.”

  He chortled. “Whether you’re a nag is up to you, but I’ve got an eleven o’clock appointment, and it would be unprofessional to miss it.”

  I watched as he brought the razor down his right cheek, his mouth twisted to the left, and I felt such an intimate kind of anger. Was this what marriage was, the slow process of getting to know another individual far better than was advisable? Sometimes Charlie’s gestures and inflections were so mercilessly familiar that it was as if he were an extension of me, an element of my own personality over which I had little control.

  I said, “If you don’t want to participate in social situations, then don’t, but it’s embarrassing to me and rude to other people when you say you will and then flake out.”

  When he glanced at me, I sensed that his mood had deflected my comments completely; my words were like pennies bouncing off him. He said, “But you don’t want to be a nag, huh?”

  “I’d think you’d try to go out of your way to be respectful toward Miss Ruby.”

  He held his razor under the faucet for a few seconds, then brought it back up to his face. “Who gave her the impression I’d be here? Wasn’t me, darlin’. If this is so important to you, reschedule—see if they can do it next weekend. All’s I know is I’m about to buy a baseball team.”

  “We’ll be in Princeton next weekend.” I took a step backward, into our bedroom. I would go downstairs and prepare lunch, and I’d welcome the Suttons to our home, I’d do this even if Charlie wouldn’t deign to be there and his mother didn’t approve. But first, in a voice so snippy I hardly recognized it, I said, “Don’t leave your whiskers in the sink.”

  JESSICA SUTTON HAD grown probably a foot since the last time I’d seen her, and I knew as soon as we greeted the Suttons at the front door that she was, if not an adult, no longer a child. Some sixth-graders are still children—boys more than girls—but in other kids that age, you can see a new, unsettled awareness of themselves and the world. In the best cases, the awareness is also a politeness. When you ask them how they are, they reciprocate the question, and this was exactly what Jessica did, and then she said, “Thanks for having us over, Mrs. Blackwell,” and I felt a small heartbreak for Ella, who was most definitely still a girl and would, I suspected, have difficulty keeping up with the poised, mature young woman Jessica had become. I realized that the default image of Jessica I’d been carrying in my head was from an Easter-egg hunt years before at Harold and Priscilla’s (contrary to what Priscilla had implied, Blackwells did sometimes socialize with their hired help, but it was on the Blackwells’ turf, under circumstances that highlighted their beneficence and largesse without implying that they spent time with these people because they actually enjoyed it). That Easter, Jessica had worn a red skirt with purple stars and a matching purple shirt with red stars, and even her barrettes had been color-coordinated. Her hair had been divided into little squares all over her head, each square gathered into a small ponytail, braided, and clipped with a red or purple plastic barrette; as she dashed about, accumulating eggs in her basket, the barrettes clicked together. Now Jessica was tall and serious, and she was pretty—she wore a pink tank top underneath a pink-and-white-striped dress shirt that she kept unbuttoned, and white slacks—but she was hardly girlish at all.

  As soon as she, Miss Ruby, Yvonne, baby Antoine, Ella, and I were settled on the brick patio in our backyard, Ella said, “Can I show Jessica my pop bottle?” and I said, “Honey, they just got here.”

  Jessica said, “No, I’d love to see it.” The pop bottle was a prize Ella had won at Biddle Academy’s Harvest Fest the previous fall, a glass Pepsi bottle whose neck had been heated and stretched into distortion before the bottle, emptied of cola, was filled with a toxic-looking blue liquid. Though Ella had acquired this eyesore over six months earlier, it remained a fresh source of pride—when she was seeking to impress, she clearly considered it the most powerful weapon in her arsenal.

  “Come back down in ten minutes to eat,” I called after them as they headed inside, and when the girls were gone, I said, “I can’t believe how much Jessica has grown up. And Antoine”—I leaned toward him, widening my eyes and opening my mouth —“I think maybe you’re the sweetest baby ever.” He wore a pale blue sleeper and had large brown eyes, a head of curly brown hair, and that perfectly smooth baby skin.

  Sounding amused, Yvonne said, “Alice, you’re welcome to hold him.”

  “Mind his head,” Miss Ruby said gruffly as Yvonne passed him to me.

  In my arms, Antoine was ridiculously light—at two months, he weighed perhaps ten or twelve p
ounds—and I found myself making all sorts of semi-involuntary coos and gasps and funny faces, no dispensation of dignity being too great for the reward of his tiny smile.

  “Maybe you should have another, you ever think of that?” Yvonne said.

  I laughed. “I’m too old.”

  Yvonne made a skeptical expression. “Oh, I bet you and Charlie B. still got some juice.”

  “Watch your mouth, Yvonne Patrice,” Miss Ruby said, and at this, both Yvonne and I laughed. Miss Ruby had on turquoise linen pants, a turquoise short-sleeved sweater with scalloped sleeves, and flat sandals with turquoise straps, and Yvonne wore a flowered T-shirt and a long denim skirt. While Miss Ruby was slim, Yvonne had wide hips and thick upper arms, large teeth and lips, short hair that she fluffed up off her head, and, I noticed now, swollen nursing breasts.

  “I’m sorry that Charlie isn’t here today,” I said. “We got our signals crossed, and he ended up scheduling a business meeting.”

  Yvonne waved away my apology. “Clyde’s working at the hospital, so I know all about that. The doctors and nurses still gotta eat on Memorial Day.”

  “You and Clyde were married last summer?” I said.

  “He’s a real good guy.” Yvonne leaned forward, to where I held Antoine on my lap. “Isn’t that right, Baby A?” she cooed. “Papa’s a good man.” To me, she said, “Antoine looks just like his father, that’s for sure.”

  “They always do at this age,” Miss Ruby said.