The Glass Wives

by Amy Sue Nathan

  “Nicole, look at me.” She did. “None of that matters. Let’s just move on, okay?” But don’t push me.

  Nicole nodded and sniffed. The crying in Evie’s presence would have to stop; Nicole needed a new mother figure and some new friends. Evie could get behind that, help her do it; Evie was good at making friends. Or, she used to be.

  “You have a mom and extended family—and probably old friends back in Iowa. Why aren’t you packing up Luca and heading west when there’s nothing for you here?” Evie pictured a covered wagon bumping down the road, stopping in Nicole’s driveway, her and Richard’s matching luggage tossed through the opening in the tattered cover.

  “I can’t live with my mother, and Iowa has too many sad memories for me.”

  The entire state of Iowa was off-limits? Lakewood didn’t have sad memories? “Why did you leave home in the first place?”

  Nicole nuzzled Luca and whispered baby talk. She turned toward the window and pointed outside, still muttering. The sides of Evie’s neck tingled and then itched. She rubbed her neck but the feeling remained.

  “Are you going to answer me?” Evie said.

  Nicole’s hair flopped back and forth as she shook her head.

  * * *

  Beth’s laptop lay on her family-room floor between Evie and Laney.

  “This is wrong,” Beth said, opening it. “We shouldn’t snoop.”

  “That’s what the Internet is for,” Laney said, turning the laptop toward her and tapping the power button. In a convoluted tug-of-war, Beth turned the laptop back to herself. Then Laney turned it. Then Beth. Then Laney. Then Beth.

  “Fine! If somebody is going to do it, I’ll do it,” Beth said, whisking the laptop off the floor and onto her outstretched legs. She huffed at Laney, admonishment usually left for someone who didn’t do the dishes. “Unless you want to do it yourself,” Beth added with raised eyebrows, looking at Evie.

  Evie sank into the corner of the oversize love seat, faux-fur blanket around her covering everything but her face. She couldn’t shake a chill. “I don’t want to do it, but I have to know. Please?”

  “You don’t feel just a little bad that Nicole is home with Luca and Sam and you’re over here digging into her past?”

  “Why should she feel guilty?” Laney stood from the floor in one seamless motion without using her hands for leverage or balance. Upright, she was several feet taller than Beth. “If the widow is hiding something, Evie has a right to know. What if she shot a man in Iowa just to watch him die?” Beth looked up at Laney, then back at the laptop. She shrugged, then typed, the tap-tap-tap-tap-taps pounding in Evie’s head like a jackhammer.

  “Maybe it’s a bad idea,” Evie said. “No, go ahead, do it. No, wait, don’t.”

  “She’s making me crazy,” Laney said to Beth.

  Beth just stared at the monitor and typed. “Leave her alone, she can’t help it.”

  “She is right here,” Evie said, but she didn’t care. They were talking about her in front of her, which she knew was better than when someone talked behind her back.

  “Take a nap,” Laney directed.

  Evie closed her eyes. For once, she liked being told what to do, liked knowing someone else was taking care of business. Evie was tired. Tired of taking care of the kids without a break. Tired of having to have Nicole in the house. Tired of her neighbors not knowing what to say when they saw her in the grocery store. She was tired of wondering what would happen next. Keeping her eyes closed meant the next thing would be opening them. Sometimes, it was the little things. But closed eyes seemed to open a portal for her thoughts.

  Why didn’t she pressure Nicole to tell her about Iowa? Was she respecting Nicole’s privacy? That did not seem prudent considering Nicole’s privacy once included Evie’s husband. It was just easier to invade Nicole’s privacy online than in person.

  “I’m going to look into the public court records in the county where she lived in Iowa. If you want me to stop, say so now,” Beth said.

  “Do it or don’t, I don’t care,” Evie said, eyes open, portal closed.

  “If you don’t care, why are we doing this?” Beth said. “It’s really not right anyway. If Nicole wanted you to know about her life in Iowa, she would have told you.”

  “You mean like with Richard? Look, I have to figure out how I’m going to live. You figure out what she’s hiding.”

  “Our pleasure,” Laney said as she sat back down next to Beth and took the computer for herself. Beth didn’t argue. Beth didn’t like doing this because Beth liked Nicole, and Evie knew it.

  “Hey, what if Nicole is on the Internet looking up things about me?” Evie said.

  “What’s she going to find?” Laney said. “A bake-sale scandal?”

  “Touché.” Had Evie been that suburban? Yes. She was the volunteering, baking mom who brought a thermos of pink lemonade to the park with a stack of Dixie cups. No one should be thirsty at the park. She had only turned her back on the burbs on her weekends without the kids.

  “Laney’s right,” Beth said. “Nicole doesn’t need to look up anything about you. She knows everything she wants to know. Probably has since she met Richard.”

  “Right, I’m sure she had you all scoped out,” Laney said.

  Evie and Nicole’s relationship—Wait, they had a relationship?—was like a one-way street, all roads leading to Evie. Now it was Evie’s turn to see the world from Nicole’s point of view. It wasn’t a matter of trying to walk in Nicole’s shoes as much as it was knowing just where those shoes had been and possibly what they’d stepped in.

  “Just go home and ask her why she doesn’t want to go back to Iowa,” Beth said. “I think if you give her a chance—”

  “She’ll lie,” Laney interrupted. “Once a liar always a liar.”

  Evie nodded. “Keep looking.”

  Maybe it was a mistake. Uncovering secrets didn’t always solve problems, sometimes it was better not to know. If she didn’t know for sure about Richard, maybe they would have stayed married. Instead of a Stepford wife, Evie could have become a Lakeford wife and just walked around in a daze, wearing pearls. Evie knew that the dissolution of her marriage became less about what Richard did than how he did it. Everyone thought he’d earned his Ph.D. in applied mathematics, when really his doctorate was in breaking promises. The half-built shed. The postponed vacations. The missed family dinners. The promises to stop breaking promises.

  Unlike Richard to Evie, Evie had promised Nicole nothing.

  “I’m hungry,” Evie said. “And sweating.”

  “Should we get Sam, Nicole, and the baby and go out for lunch?” Beth said.

  “No,” Laney blurted. “I don’t want to have lunch with her. Why can’t the three of us go out for lunch?”

  “I’m broke, remember?”

  “I’ll order Thai,” Laney said. “My treat. Nicole can give Sam lunch.”

  “No, my treat,” Beth said, looking at Evie. “I’m sorry that I made you feel like you shouldn’t know whatever is going on with Nicole. You should. I know that. I don’t want you to get hurt by her or anyone else. After pad thai and spring rolls, I’ll keep searching.”

  “Might not need to. What was Nicole’s name before she married Richard?” Laney said, drumming the sides of the laptop.

  “Roberts,” Evie said.

  “And before that?”

  “What do you mean before that?”

  “Roberts was her first married name.”

  * * *

  Evie paced. Then she sat. Then she stood, straightened throw pillows in the corners of the couch, moved framed photos around and then put them back. Then she paced some more.

  Nicole was taking too long. Evie had asked her to come upstairs ten minutes ago. The kids were in bed. Awake, but in bed. If Nicole and Evie talked in the living room, with the TV on, the impending conflict would be muffled by the nightly news. Probably.

  Nicole strolled in and sat on the couch. “What’s up?”

 
“You were married before?” Evie blurted. So much for easing herself into it.

  “Yeah?” Nicole said with the nonchalance of a teenager.

  “What do you mean, yeah?”

  “What do you mean? Of course I was married before.”

  Evie replayed Nicole’s words in her head. What had she missed? Of course she was married before? With her mouth open, Evie jutted her head forward and stared at Nicole, waiting for more. Was the girl naive or taunting her? Or was she just plain stupid?

  Evie threw her hands in the air. “Talk!”

  “Wait a minute,” Nicole said, even though Evie was clearly in no mood for waiting. “You didn’t know about Peter?”

  “Who’s Peter and how am I supposed to know about him?” Evie raised and then lowered her voice. She sat at the far end of the sectional and tapped her foot as if she were listening to music with a fast beat.

  “Peter was my husband. He was my high school sweetheart. You really didn’t know?” Nicole scrunched her eyebrows together. She seemed to be concentrating, trying to figure out how this gaffe could be possible.

  “I really didn’t know.”

  “Well, now I know why you keep referring to Luca as my only child.”

  “Sam and Sophie are not your children.” Evie was tiring of the word games, of drawing lines in the parenting sand.

  “I’m talking about Lucy.”

  “Who’s Lucy?” Evie’s voice and intolerance rose.

  “My daughter.” Nicole rolled up her sleeve to reveal the rose tattoo. Evie leaned in and squinted. The tattoo said LUCY.

  “You have a daughter?” A stifled scream scraped Evie’s throat as she reversed into her spot on the couch.

  “I’ll be right back.” Nicole jumped up and ran through the kitchen, the mudroom, and down the basement steps, then back up the steps and through the house louder than Evie would have liked with the kids upstairs trying to sleep. Nicole sat back on the couch before Evie had had a chance to review what she knew and didn’t know.

  Nicole reached into Luca’s diaper bag and pulled out a pink, nylon wallet. She peeled open the Velcro and withdrew a stack of scissor-cut photos. Evie squeezed the cushion. The padding squashed in her grasp. Nicole handed the photos to Evie, who held them like live grenades, flipping them from one hand to the other and back again. Then she shuffled through pictures of a freckle-faced, blue-eyed, red-haired baby, then toddler, and a blond little girl, always with the same skinny, teenage boy, also red-haired and freckle-faced. Evie tucked the photos back into the wallet.

  “Where are they now?” Evie’s heart pounded. “Where are your husband and daughter?” she demanded.

  Nicole lifted her clasped hands to her chest. “They were on their way to buy balloons. Lucy would’ve been two the next day.”

  “Would have been?” Dread filled Evie’s belly and traveled to her throat. The leftover smell of a pizza lunch nauseated her, and she held her nose for just a second and then breathed through her mouth.

  “They were killed by a drunk driver.” Nicole rocked back and forth and cradled a pillow like a newborn, holding it like a crescent moon. “Lucy would be twelve now.”

  “Oh my God,” Evie whispered. Peter and Lucy died. Evie’s body was limp and heavy. She stifled an urge to put her arms around Nicole, which was easy because Evie was paralyzed. Nicole’s voice sounded distant, as if she were speaking through a closed door, a door to which Evie had had no key before now.

  “We named Luca after her.”

  They named Luca after two-year-old Lucy. Evie shuddered with shock. It was an unmitigated Jewish honor to name a baby after a deceased relative—but after a two-year-old who would have been his older sister? Although if there were still a Lucy, there would be no Luca.

  “I was a good mom.” Nicole sniffed and nodded. Her voice was deep, the words emerging from the bottom of her throat and memory. “I surprised everybody, even myself. We were just kids, but we did the right thing when I got pregnant. Peter had already graduated, so he got a full-time job as assistant manager at the Green Ferry Hy-Vee, and then we eloped. We thought it was perfect. My mother was livid.” Nicole sighed. “She wanted me to have an abortion and go off to the University of Iowa like we’d planned my whole life, but I just couldn’t. I wanted to have the baby. And I wanted to stay with Peter.” Nicole’s face brightened, as if, for one moment, she forgot the past and the present.

  Then, her expression morphed into a deep frown. “I never thought I’d go through this again, losing the love of my life. But this time is different. I have Luca. I’ll do anything for him.” She straightened her stance and strengthened her voice. “So, I’m not running away from here the way I ran away before. I’m not leaving the place with the memories. I’m going to make a life with the memories. For Luca.” Nicole pushed hair off her face. She picked up the wallet, kissed it lightly, and touched it to her chest.

  The storm wall broke around Evie’s heart. She stood and turned away as the lump in her throat dissolved into sobs. Evie rubbed her eyes and dragged her fists down her cheeks. For once she was glad to be on a makeup strike, as any mascara would have been lost in the flood. For four years, Evie had judged Nicole harshly. What would Evie have been capable of after losing a husband and a toddler? She blubbered and gasped for breath. Empathy overwhelmed her. It riveted her to the floor, yet her impulse was to lurch toward Nicole, to comfort and care for her. This was how Evie felt when her children hurt, not when Nicole hurt. The maternal pang was unwelcome, but not unwarranted because Evie was the unintentional matriarch of this absurd newfangled family. She hadn’t been through half of what Nicole had been through. Thank God for that. Losing Richard before I was really ready? Burying the twins? A chill ran through her body and she shivered.

  Evie flinched when Nicole’s hand touched her left shoulder and then rubbed her back. Nicole was comforting her.

  “I am so sorry,” Evie said, hearing the same words she’d said and heard a thousand times in the past month. This time, she felt the simple, honest words lighten the air.

  Chapter 8

  A QUIET HOUSE IN THE late afternoon was glorious and magical and even self-indulgent. So why was Evie planted on the couch staring at the cushions? She patted the spot next to her, and Rex jumped up. Richard had never wanted the dog on the furniture, but Evie skirted that mandate every time he left for work. She’d overruled it entirely when he’d moved out.

  “I wanted time alone and now I have it, Rexy. What should I do?”

  She wanted to take advantage of the nothingness, to revel in being alone, but instead she petted the dog, stretched out her legs, and decided that an hour wasn’t really long enough to do anything. She could soak in a bubble bath, polish her nails, or dig through her closet for something to wear to Laney and Herb’s for dinner on Friday. She could close her eyes for a nap, finally try yoga, or bundle up and take Rex for a walk. Or, Evie could clean out the fridge, go through the bills again, talk to Millie, call her sister without hiding in the bathroom. She could call Midwest Mutual again. But nothing appealed to her.

  Evie fidgeted, uncomfortable in her own house. She sat straight, slouched, crossed her legs, snuggled Rex. It didn’t help. Maybe she was just uncomfortable that Sophie and Sam had gone back to “the house” with Nicole to pick up mail, more clothes, more baby supplies. Nicole’s four o’clock mission made their living arrangement seem more permanent. The more stuff Nicole had in the basement, the more the basement was Nicole’s. Evie knew that. But what could she do? She needed Nicole’s “rent” to pay her mortgage, and she needed Nicole’s presence to—to what? To give her an hour or two alone so she could spend the whole time deciding what to do?

  Off the couch and into the kitchen, Evie dialed Lisa and wiggled in her earpiece so it wouldn’t slip. Lisa had demanded a daily report after Nicole moved in, and this would be the first time Evie spoke above a whisper.

  “There’s no good food in this house,” Evie said to herself, forgetting she was on the pho
ne. She stared into a cabinet in an effort to conjure up a delicious dinner.

  “What happened to all the food we left you?” Lisa said.

  “We ate it. That was a month ago.” Lisa sometimes forgot there was a world outside of Lisa.

  “I hope Nicole is paying for her own food. It’s bad enough you have to let her live there, she better pull her own weight.”

  “She is, don’t worry.” Evie hadn’t figured it out down to the penny; with Nicole’s check and the Social Security checks and her holiday bonus from Millie’s, all the bills were paid. But next month was a different story.

  But first, the cabinets. What had possessed Evie to stock up on Triscuits as if they could save the world, and who put them between the Tetley tea and cans of tuna? She accumulated bags of generic, unsweetened cereal that looked like Styrofoam peanuts, and the bags were stacked next to a jar of Cheeze Whiz. Someone had been messing in Evie’s pantry.

  Lisa interrupted Evie’s inventorying. She turned away from the soldierlike cupboard contents. Her thoughts should only be as orderly.

  “Has Sam gone back to school yet?”

  “No. He will soon though, I can tell. He checks the clock starting at about ten in the morning to see when Sophie will be home.”

  “Well, when you have more time, I think you need a hobby. Not to mention, a job.”

  “I have a carton of that soy milk you like. And there are kumquats with the oranges. When did I get those?” Evie deflected. She noticed color-coded jars of baby food stacked behind organic, unsweetened applesauce.

  “I don’t drink soy milk, and I don’t know a kumquat from a kiwi. You better throw them out. Don’t ignore me. You need a job and a hobby.”

  “It must all be Nicole’s,” Evie said, sibling directives be damned. She shifted the pesticide-laden Delicious apples to the front of the fruit drawer.