The Starter Wife

by Nina Laurin

  I look at him, wide-eyed, slack-jawed, struggling to come up with something to tell him—something I really should have thought of before, on my way here, back home, any other time than right now. But my brain is sluggish, and I can’t think of a single thing.

  And finally, I can’t take it anymore. I crumble, my eyes screw shut, and tears burst forth, too powerful for me to stop them. Sobs shake me to the core. I paw blindly for the napkin, except it’s balled up with a half-chewed mess of dates in the center, and they only gave me the one.

  “Here.” Derek Hollis presses a clean napkin into my hand. When I finally dare to open my eyes a crack, I have no idea what look I’ll see on his face—shock, surprise, awkwardness. But he just sits there, looking concerned.

  Derek Hollis doesn’t look like he belongs in this hippie-dippie café, or on the Mansfield campus, for that matter. In defiance to all the clichés, he has the tall, blond, clean-cut look of a former jock who did well in life and didn’t let himself go. His close-cropped hair recedes a little but is thick and healthy, and he wears a clean, ironed button-down shirt that fits like a glove over his well-toned upper body. In another life, he might be that dream guy all the girls gravitate toward, a shoulder to lean on. Except, of course, for the fact that he likes men.

  He slides the steaming mug of herbal tea toward me. “I haven’t touched it yet. Have a sip—it’s chamomile.”

  I’m not enthused at the idea but I do it anyway. The tea burns my lips, and the bitter, hay-like taste of chamomile fills my mouth, making me shudder. But I realize Derek is right. The tea warms its way down into my stomach, instantly calming me. At least calming me enough to be able to talk again. “Thank you.”

  He heaves a discreet sigh. “I was afraid of this. It’s not really about any surprise, is it?”

  I only look at him blankly and blink. And gulp.

  “What’s happening?” Derek asks. His blond brows furrow. “What did he do?”

  I’m becoming aware of the strangeness of the situation. Of his calm, his lack of surprise. The question only cements it.

  “Why are you assuming it was something he did?”

  He gives a weary chuckle. “It’s pretty obvious, Claire. We barely know each other. Why else would you suddenly get in touch?”

  At all the parties and gatherings, I always gravitate to him and his partner to make small talk and chat about the recent Oscar-bait films that came out. Probably because he and Greg (well, especially Greg) are closer to me in age than anyone else there. I did my best to try to bridge the gap between acquaintance and sort-of friend so to hear him say that kind of stings.

  “You message me out of nowhere, wanting to meet, and it sounds urgent. I figured there weren’t a million things it could be.”

  I don’t know what moves me but I put my hand on top of his. My fingers are icy and clammy in contrast to his dry, warm hand but despite all the awkwardness of the moment, he doesn’t pull away.

  “Things aren’t good, Derek. Not good at all.”

  “Tell me all about it.” His eyes are blue and honest, and I hear no ulterior motive in his voice.

  Telling him about it is the last thing I should be doing. Not because I think it might get back to Byron—something tells me it won’t. But complaining about a man to his friends—or even his coworkers he’s sort of friendly with—is just not something a good wife does. Not something Claire Greene Westcott does, anyway.

  But the fact is he’s here, and he’s looking me in the eye and listening. Which is more than I can say for Byron for the last while. So I don’t stop myself.

  “He barely seems to know I’m there.” I pull my chunky-knit sweater tighter around me. “In the last few months, I feel like I’m a ghost. We hardly ever even—” I cut myself off.

  “He loves you, Claire. He talks about you all the time.” But when he says it, the words are flat with no real conviction behind them. “He was crazy about you when you got married, remember? I’ve known him for a decade, since before I finished my master’s. I’ve never seen the guy this happy.” I’m not sure which one of us he’s trying to convince. “At least, not since before…” He trails off and avoids my gaze.

  “Colleen,” I say. The syllables cut me as they roll off my tongue. It’s as if the din of the café dies down right at this unfortunate moment, and her name resonates like a glass shattering.

  “That’s what I wanted to ask you about,” I say, and watch the look on his face shift. He’s wincing, like he knew this was coming but still hoped against hope that it wouldn’t.

  “Is it true?” I lean in and lower the volume of my voice but keep it firm. He hesitates but doesn’t pull back. “Did Byron…Was he a suspect? Did the police think he actually had something to do with her death?”

  “Where did you hear that?” he asks, eyebrows furrowed. Under his gaze, I squirm—I can’t tell him about RateProf.com; that’s just embarrassing. But to my relief, he doesn’t wait for the answer. “It was gossip,” he says firmly. “Yes, the police investigated but it was because Colleen had disappeared, and no body was found. That was normal. Standard procedure. They questioned Byron, of course, and people on campus…”

  “Why would they question people on campus? She hadn’t been teaching for years at that point.”

  He says nothing. The pause lingers, growing heavier with every millisecond. “People,” he says at last, not without reluctance, “who knew Byron. They just wanted to establish the timeline of things. But of course, some students got wind of it, and the rumor mill got grinding. You know how it is.”

  No, I don’t know, I almost blurt, self-righteously. I never participated in gossip or spread rumors, not in high school, not in college, where I tended to keep my peers at arm’s length. Thankfully, I manage to keep my mouth shut.

  “But then they assessed all the evidence and concluded it was suicide. By drowning,” Derek says. “I mean, there was even a note. And I think, deep down, everyone knew it was true. So no one harassed Byron further, thank God.”

  “They knew it was true?” I ask. “How?”

  He leans back in his chair, and his hand slips out from under mine, leaving it hovering awkwardly over the table. I set it down by my side like a stiff, dead thing. He stretches, running his fingers over his close-cropped hair.

  “Because Colleen,” he says, “well…she might not have been teaching for some time, but still. Everyone knew she had…issues.”

  I know I should tread carefully now that he’s finally opening up. But I can’t help it. “What kind of issues?”

  At first I think I’ve done it—pushed too far. Derek sighs with frustration. “Oh hell,” he mutters under his breath. “Claire, listen. There’s something I must tell you, and maybe it’ll make you feel better or maybe it’ll make you feel worse—I don’t know—but I’m going to take a chance.”

  I brace myself, mentally praying for him to go on, to not change his mind.

  “One thing is for sure. Byron…you guys might have your problems, but trust me—it’s nothing compared to the hell he went through with that woman.”

  I’m taken aback. I expected something earth-shattering, for sure, but not this.

  “Yeah. Colleen really did a number on him. I know you’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead, and Colleen has her flock of rabid admirers who are ready to jump down your throat the moment you utter so much as one unflattering word about their idol, so…” He trails off, waves his hand dismissively. “I’ve done my best to keep my mouth shut about it, especially back when she…when she passed. But now you’re here, and you’re asking, and I feel like I can’t keep it inside any longer.”

  I draw in a sharp breath.

  “The woman was crazy. She was a crazy, evil, manipulative bitch who put Byron through hell because the relationship was falling apart and she couldn’t let go.” He lowers his voice to a deeper, angry pitch as he leans toward me on his elbows. “You have absolutely nothing to be jealous of. He’s well rid of her. I was happy
for him when he met you. You’re good for him.”

  “Falling apart?” I echo. I barely heard what he said after that; my mind latched on to the words, turning them around and around, trying to understand. And they refuse to fit with everything else. With the paintings, and the house, and everything Byron himself has told me.

  Derek sighed. “You can keep this a secret, right? I mean, Byron told me this in confidence, and I never repeated it to anyone. Don’t get me wrong: If I thought there might be cause, even the slightest reason, to tell anyone—the police or anyone else—I would have, but there wasn’t. Because he didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Of course,” I repeat hollowly.

  “They’d been having troubles for a while. The normal sort of troubles, rough patches like everyone has—he was about to be given tenure, she was travelling all over the country showing her paintings in galleries, too much work, too much stress. She cracked under the pressure.

  “There was a party at their house. At your house,” he corrects himself, a little too hastily, and his gaze avoids mine. “He threw one every year after the last class of the summer semester but it was my first one, right after I started teaching my first class at the college. I was pumped—I mean, they were the power couple, you know? Flashy, fun, sort of famous even. She started to sell paintings for tens of thousands apiece, and she had recently quit teaching to paint full-time. Aka the dream, right?” He chuckles. “Back then, it was, what, ten, nine years ago, the house had a backyard. I don’t know if you knew?”

  I shake my head. “There’s still a backyard,” I say, uncertain what he means.

  “Yeah, but this was before that giant ugly deck was built. They had a garden there. Colleen loved it. She was primarily the one taking care of it too so, after she died, it grew over with weeds and the neighbors complained. So he had to do something about it, you know? In this case, it was to pour concrete over most of it and build that deck-slash-gazebo-slash-veranda thing.”

  I nod. Now all that’s left of the garden is the thin border of lawn and some flower baskets that Byron pays one of the neighbors, an older man two houses down, to keep maintained. We’ve held barbecues on that veranda once or twice with Emily and her husband, bottles of rosé, and mosquito-repellent torches that filled the air with the sickly sweet lemony scent of poison that never quite kept the bloodsuckers at bay. With Byron manipulating skewers of chicken (the only meat Emily eats) and vegetables on the giant, clunky barbecue that spent most of its life rusting under a heavy tarp cover.

  “It was different then. Just a picnic table, some chairs; we’d lounge around among all her plants and flowers. So I arrived there, bottle of wine in hand, nervous because everyone else there was a good decade older and had, you know, real careers.” His smile still has an incredulous tinge to it, tainted though it is with bitterness. “So maybe I drank a little too much, out of nervousness. When I realized I really overdid it, I went inside to find some water, or just a quiet corner I could curl up in until I’d sobered up and could be sure I wouldn’t end up puking on someone’s shoes. Outside, Colleen had hung up all these lanterns and those little outdoor lights that look like Christmas lights, and the yard was lit up like it was still day even though the sun had already set.

  “So I go indoors, and the house is empty. And dark, and…cold, like they let the AC run too low for too long. I don’t know—I just got a chill right then and there. It felt hostile. I don’t know how else to explain it. And then I heard them talking in the next room. I felt bad about eavesdropping but it was too late—I was stuck there because I was too drunk to sneak back out quietly without being noticed. All I could do was stand there behind the doorway to the living room, try to be still, and hope they’d go back outside.

  “But they were fighting. I understood right away, before she even started yelling. They spoke in hushed tones but their voices just hummed with anger. It was the anger I heard more than the words themselves but it wasn’t hard to guess what they were.

  “He told her to calm down and not make a scene, that their friends were right outside. Fuck you and your friends, she snapped. It’s not the time or the place, he said, and he sounded almost supplicating. It never is, she replied in this sneering, hissing voice. You just walk around silently blaming me, and everyone can see that. I’m not an idiot.

  “He said, You’re not yourself right now. What did you take this time?

  “That’s when she raised her voice, protesting violently. You’re drunk, he said, but that’s not all, is it? What did you take? I thought I flushed it all down the toilet last time.

  “Then she mumbled something, in the voice of a lost child on the verge of tears. It got under my skin. She just kept whimpering, and he just kept asking, voice rising higher and higher, What did you take, Colleen? Are we really going to do this again? They’ll lock you up this time.

  “She murmured something, he asked her to repeat it, and she said, I hope they do. That’s when I decided I needed to get out of there, no matter if they saw me or not. I started to move but that’s when she screamed. This hair-raising scream that froze me in my tracks. And I remember word for word what she was screaming. Stop punishing me, she yelled. It’s not my fault I lost it.”

  When I can finally bring myself to look at Derek’s face, it’s frozen in an expression bordering on horror, eyes glazed, as if reliving the moment inside his own head.

  “I saw Byron’s back, partially, from where I was hiding. I was stone-cold sober now. She threw something at him, a glass or wineglass I think, and he barely dodged it. Broken glass went flying everywhere. Then there was a plate, then some kind of cutlery.

  “Byron tried to subdue her. He said something too soft for me to make out, and then I just remember her sobbing. That’s when I backed out past the entrance to the living room and went back outside where all their friends were tipsy and someone had put on eighties music and someone else was singing along out of key. I stood there at the patio door, probably looking like a ghost, and there they were, having a great time.”

  Derek focuses his gaze on me. His shoulders droop a little, like he’s embarrassed. “Yeah, that’s what I saw. A half hour later they reappeared. Colleen’s hand was bandaged. She told someone she dropped a glass and cut herself. I could be wrong at this point but her pupils were like saucers; she looked like she was high. That’s all. Actually, no. That’s not quite all.”

  What else? The words are on the tip of my tongue but I’m afraid to speak them out loud.

  “I never dared really confront Byron about it. It’s kind of personal, isn’t it? But later, someone at the college told me something, and I connected the dots, so to speak.”

  “What she lost,” I say, my lips numb.

  “Yeah. They’d been trying to have a baby. It was Byron’s idea. She wasn’t entirely on board with it.”

  I already figured as much, but still, it’s like taking a bullet. My shoulders turn inward, and I pull my head in between them. I’m thinking about the painting that was no longer in the trunk of my car. About the doctor’s appointment next week that I’d optimistically made, that I’d have to cancel because now I had no way to pay for it.

  Derek may have thought he was telling me this for my benefit. But I feel a million times worse.

  Byron had wanted a baby. With her. With a woman who had no interest in such cliché, traditional things, who chose her brushes and smearing about toxic paints all day. With a woman who…

  “And the same person told me—”

  “Wait.” I hold up my hands. I can’t take any more of this, not all at once. Derek looks apologetic. “Who exactly is that other person?”

  Derek studiously looks away, and surprising even myself, I feel a surge of a wholly different emotion. No longer fear or anguish, but anger, bright and clean. “It’s too late to be coy at this point. Who was it?”

  He rubs his eyebrow, his posture and body language signaling his unease. A couple of people in the background look up from their Mac
laptops for a split second.

  “Her name is Isabelle Herrera. She’s not at Mansfield anymore.” Derek looks like he’s wishing he could fall right through the floor. His forehead and cheeks turn that blotchy pink of only very fair-skinned people, making his eyebrows and stubble look even blonder.

  “She was an assistant. She and Byron were…involved.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I sent an email to the address Derek forwarded to me—I made him do it right there in the coffee shop, from his phone, so he couldn’t make more excuses, bow out, and then vanish. I checked my new Facebook account too, and a couple more of the posters from RateProf.com have accepted my friend requests. I still haven’t decided how I’m going to go about approaching them, what story I’ll cook up. But I have time to think about it. For now.

  The next thing won’t wait.

  I arrive at the Ova Clinic a good half hour before my appointment. I’d called and badgered the secretary to get Dr. Hassan to see me today. The secretary was apprehensive but finally bleated something about Dr. Hassan having a cancellation this afternoon so perhaps, as an exception, she might see me. I know there was no cancellation, and considering what the clinic charges per visit, they can very well make time for me.

  I park my car in the small lot next to the clinic, and by the time I step into the lobby, all my furious energy has deserted me, leaving me drained, my head heavy and my bones achy. They have the AC going on full blast, and the bone-dry, icy air of the clinic envelops me, smelling softly of lilac-scented air freshener. All it does is make me sick to my stomach, or maybe it’s the date square aberration or the recent food-poisoning-that-wasn’t, but most likely, it’s psychological. Psychosomatic, as Emily would say with that self-important air. It’s really just the memory of the bad news I received here, all these months ago.

  Is that when everything started to go south? I wonder as I sign in at the security desk. A pure formality; they never once checked my ID. I’m just being crazy. Byron can’t have grown cold to me because it turned out I’m infertile—no, “reproductively challenged” is the preferred term. If only because he hadn’t known we were trying, strictly speaking. Believe it or not, I was going to make it a surprise. Quit the pill almost two years ago now, shortly after we got married. I still had that stupid idea in my head, an idea my university friends would have sneered at. The idea of marriage and on its heels the baby and family vacations and maybe a dog.