The Starter Wife

by Nina Laurin

  The toast pops out of the toaster, startling me. I swing my arm and manage to knock over the first empty wine bottle. My reflexes seem to be running in slow motion, because I barely have time to draw a breath before the bottle shatters on the kitchen tiles. Green glass goes flying, and I find myself standing in the middle of a disaster area—barefoot, naturally.

  Cursing, I tiptoe for the broom, and by the time I’m done sweeping and making sure no stray shards lurk under the furniture, the toast is cold, and the coffee barely lukewarm.

  Not the best start.

  I gather my breakfast on a tray and carry it outside, vainly trying to steady the tremor that seems to have permanently taken hold of my hands.

  It’s a beautiful September day. I settle in on the veranda, my tray on the deck table, my feet curled up under me in the comfy chair. The sun slants just right, so I’m warm enough but still in the shadow. It’s a mistake to think the sun is less potent in the fall. And besides, tans are vulgar. I’ve always thought so. I came of age at a time when the trend was already on its way out, and it was more of a Chrissy thing anyway. Like many other girls at our school, she’d go to the salon every couple of weeks and spend what I thought was mad money to use the tanning bed.

  The thought of Chrissy gives me a tiny, inward shudder. I glance nervously at the silent, black screen on my phone, sitting on the tray next to my plate. Under the pretext of swiping toast crumbs off the surface, I press the button. I have no new alerts.

  After I’d listened to the voicemail one last time, I finally deleted it as I should have done right away. Yet it stuck with me, lingering like a bitter aftertaste. I spent half the night tossing and turning, stumbling through shadowy dreams of our old house, of our old room that she had turned into two separate ones by hanging up one of those heavy plastic shower curtains with the weights in the hem.

  Even at home, Chrissy felt the need to separate herself from me, as if that undeniable whiff of failure associated with me might cling to her if she spent too much time in the same space. It would stick to her like the deep-fryer smell from my after-school job, and her cool, popular friends would pick up on it, as teens always do, detecting uncoolness with the precision of bloodhounds. And then maybe they wouldn’t let her hang out with them anymore—a fate worse than death when you’re in ninth grade.

  So she pulled that weighted curtain closed and left me on the other side. She never brought people to the house. If they saw the room, the curtain, our dented couch with the beer cans at its foot, no amount of shoplifted clothes and brand-name sneakers would save her. She was only waiting for the chance to get out. As soon as she could, she did.

  If she thinks I’ll let her barge into the life I’ve painstakingly built for myself with hard work and dedication—if she thinks she can try and sabotage it, out of sheer jealousy or envy or whatever drives her—she has no idea how wrong she is.

  I sip my coffee as the sun creeps slowly but surely across the deck table toward my hand. I’ll have to move my chair soon, and I don’t feel like it. For once, I want to sit and soak up the warm rays, skin cancer and premature aging and tan lines be damned. That’s what Colleen would do, I’m sure.

  I banish the thought of her before she can take up any more space in my head. Instead, I look out over the flower baskets, over the slice of the neighbor’s manicured backyard that I can see from the veranda. They have a garden with a layout that used to mirror ours, until the deck was built. I wonder occasionally whether I’d enjoy maintaining a garden, the real thing, not just a couple of boxes of geraniums. All that digging around in the earth, planting seeds, watering, and then pruning and weeding. Again, something Colleen used to love. For that reason alone, I love this veranda. I smile to myself as the sun finally reaches my elbow and relish the heat of it. Screw the garden. I’m glad it’s gone.

  My phone gives a short vibration that blows the moment apart. I don’t move, not outwardly, but every muscle in my body stiffens. Slowly, I turn my head and see the alert right before the screen goes dark. In a slow, controlled movement, I reach for the phone and pick it up.

  It’s an email from Sarah Sterns.

  Dear Claire, I read. Thank you very much for contacting me. She writes in an old-fashioned style, in too-long sentences. Which usually means she overthought it, agonizing over every word. I can picture her, chewing on the inside of her cheek, her pale face bathed in the light of her screen, composing through the better part of the night. Then she’d sleep on it and, having made sure that every word was still in place, send it in the morning.

  Why so much effort for the wife of an ex-boyfriend from years and years ago?

  Isabelle messaged me about you so I was expecting your email. We’ve spoken several times over the years, not just about Byron but also about Colleen. I know this must sound pretty strange—

  No kidding.

  —but it’s not because I’m obsessed, or because Isabelle is. And it’s not because either of us had any trouble letting go of our relationships with Byron Westcott. So please don’t be threatened or alarmed.

  I forget that I’m sitting in the middle of a sunny September morning. I had stopped feeling the sunlight, which is now working its way up my arm. Its heat mingles with the chill that settles in my bones.

  I’ve often made up theories about Byron and his relationship with his wife. I note the “wife” with a twitch of jealousy. I’m the wife, I think pettily, and want to reply to her just to correct her. Colleen was just the starter wife. And I must say I’ve never even come close to anything that might explain what went on between the two. But it must have been pretty unique, a deep connection, the kind that changes you. No wonder no other relationship can match that for him.

  Thanks for the reassurance, I think, seething.

  But, without further ado, I should probably answer your question before I go off on tangents. Byron and I started dating five years ago. We met at an alumni event at the college. I did my graphic design BA at Mansfield almost twenty years ago, and I had just moved back to Columbus to take care of my mother. I won’t bore you with the details but it was tough, leaving my whole life behind in Buffalo, and I needed to find a job fast, too, to keep up with the medical bills. That invite arrived in my email at just the right time, and I thought it was—I know it sounds stupid in retrospect—serendipity, or something like that. Fate.

  For some reason, the word sets my teeth on edge.

  I thought a little networking couldn’t hurt, anyway. So I went, but instead of finding a new work opportunity or reconnecting with old friends, I found Byron. Or he found me.

  It was a little intense, how he just seemed to zero in on me. Truth be told, I only realized that looking back. At the time, I was flattered—not just flattered, dazzled. He was handsome and fun to talk to, but at the same time, he never monopolized the conversation like a lot of men do. He wanted to know about me. Before I knew it, I was spilling the whole story, right there at the alumni banquet over a glass of prosecco and some canapes. About my mom’s dementia, and my work troubles, the whole thing. I must admit I was a tiny bit drunk by then. Later, when I sobered up, I was sure I’d never see him again. Talking to men about your problems is the fastest way to make them vanish into the ether, isn’t it?

  I stare at the screen coldly. What, am I expected to relate? I never made my problems Byron’s problems. Not at the start, not after we were married, and even now, I’m doing my damned best.

  So imagine my surprise when he messaged me the next day—on a professional networking site, no less. I never left him my number but he found out my full name from someone at the event and took it from there. Again, that should have been a red flag. Or maybe I’m paranoid. But in light of how things ended, you can hardly blame me.

  Once again, I hold back an uncomfortable shiver. Isn’t that what I’m doing right now—looking for cracks in Sarah Sterns’s character so I can rationalize her away as yet another crazy woman who was rejected and couldn’t cope? So I can sweep this wh
ole thing under the proverbial rug and keep ignoring the things happening right in front of me, writing them off as any marriage’s inevitable terrible twos?

  I turn my attention back to the email.

  We messaged back and forth for the rest of the week, and on the weekend, we went on a date. I was a little surprised when he suggested a place so far out of the way, almost an hour’s drive from the college, in the middle of a ramshackle neighborhood—the kind of place I wouldn’t walk alone at night. The restaurant itself seemed like a hole in the wall. But he said the place was the city’s best-kept secret, and I took his word for it. He ordered drinks, and the food was surprisingly good! He drove me home afterward, didn’t suggest coming up, the perfect gentleman.

  Then we went on another date, then another. We kissed, and I could tell we had chemistry, yet still he made no attempt to invite me over. In fact, I got the feeling he was trying to keep me as far as possible from his house—as if he were trying to hide me from someone.

  For just a moment, I manage to forget I’m not reading fiction, and my breath catches. But then I glance at the next sentence, and Colleen’s name brings me back to earth in a heartbeat.

  I made a couple of inquiries with some old acquaintances at the college, and the story of Colleen came out. I have to admit I wasn’t as alarmed as I should have been. If anything, I found it intriguing, and almost endearing. I mean, poor guy, right? I thought it explained a lot. He wasn’t fully over her, he was afraid of getting hurt, all the typical horseshit. And of course I filled my head with the usual delusions: that I’ll be the one to bring him back to life, to heal him. How stupid was I, you’re probably asking. But at the time, I really believed it. Besides, it sort of gave me perspective on my own problems, which didn’t look so serious in comparison. So I attacked the task of bringing Byron back to life with all the energy I could muster. I pushed and pushed until he finally gave in and asked me over for a drink after one of our dates.

  I can’t help but flinch. She is writing about having sex with my husband, after all. Even though at the time I was little more than a clueless undergrad adrift in life. And since he’s twenty years older than I, obviously, there were other women—many of them.

  The moment I walked into that house, it became so clear. It didn’t look like a single man’s house. It looked like a couple still lived there. Like she never left. And the paintings—I’d looked up her paintings online and recognized the style immediately. After I saw that, I wasn’t sure I could have sex with him at all. It felt wrong. Perverted, you know?

  I, of course, hadn’t questioned any of it, too dazzled by Byron (in Sarah’s own words) to bring it up. I was so wrapped up in the marvel of it all, this exciting new relationship with the alluring older man. Did I deserve what I got, stumbling boldly into the middle of someone else’s sordid history? I was barely twenty-four at the time, a child from his perspective. Sarah, on the other hand, had to be in her early forties. Did she pick up on things I ignored? Did Byron realize that? What if he did…and didn’t like it?

  So, I’m not exactly proud of what happened next but please bear with me. He offered me a drink, and I took him up on the offer. Did I ever. He had this whole bar in the living room, and he made us some kind of cocktail I’d never had before, super-bitter and strong, not my kind of drink normally, but that evening, I was only too happy to down one after another. And it went to my head, like I hoped. Hard and fast. Everything is actually kind of blurry afterward but I remember enough snippets to put the picture together. We were on the living room couch. It was intense—we were tearing off each other’s clothes—and I guess I was drunk enough not to pay attention to his dead wife’s paintings all over the house.

  I didn’t see the one in the bedroom until the next morning, when I woke up in his bed. I can only assume you’ve seen it. It dawned on me right then and there, through the pounding headache of my hangover, what I was up against. And that was before I realized I was alone in the house.

  I stop reading and squeeze my eyes shut. The sun bathes my face, and all I can see through my closed eyelids is red, red, red.

  He just left me there. At first, I thought he was downstairs in the kitchen, but no. Here I was, disoriented, barely able to stand after everything I drank the night before, alone in the house. There was a note on the counter, scrawled carelessly on a shred of paper torn from a notebook, saying there was some kind of emergency and he had to leave for work and to please help myself to anything I needed. I made myself a coffee and found some aspirin in the bathroom. I drank my coffee perched at the kitchen counter, feeling like a pathetic mess. I was going to wait for him to come back, if you can believe it. But then they called from the care home and told me my mom had taken a fall, so I had to go. In retrospect, it was probably for the best—saved me a pretty humiliating conversation. Because later that day, he broke up with me. On the same networking site. I still remember every word: I was so humiliated I think it’s branded into my mind forever.

  Dear Sarah, it said, I’m sorry but we can’t see each other anymore. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t contact me again. That’s all. I understood that I’d made a fool of myself but I didn’t think I deserved that. I should have just left it at that, cut my losses, and moved on. But in the heat of the moment, my head still aching, my mind in disarray, I wrote back immediately, saying I was sorry, the drink went to my head, and so on.

  I find myself smirking, my heart light with relief. I really thought it would be a lot more sinister. What I’m reading is the old story of a woman who behaved like a drunken mess, screwed up on a date, and needs to blame someone else. I should tell her to contact her local AA chapter, really.

  Then I remember the disaster the other day, and my face flushes painfully. Pressing the cool back of my hand to my burning cheek, I keep reading.

  The problem is, it didn’t end there. I got three more messages from Byron over the next few days. Nothing outright threatening, but they made my skin crawl. The first one was on the networking site. I saw that he had viewed my profile dozens of times in one day, and then I got a short missive saying that he was sorry but he found drunk women extremely unattractive and there was nothing to be done. That was a couple of days after the whole disaster, and I was so embarrassed that I deleted it before it occurred to me to take a screenshot.

  Then I got another one on Facebook, a private message saying that he was sorry for his harsh words but after what he went through with his first wife, he simply couldn’t deal with that again. I never replied. It explained things, sort of, but it still left a bad taste in my mouth. If so, why ply me with liquor? Or let me crawl all over him when I was dead drunk. Sure, what man would ever turn down sex when it’s offered, but…He didn’t seem like the type. Then again, I was starting to realize Byron Westcott was not what he seemed.

  I got a third message a week later. In my email. It said simply: Dear Sarah, you clearly have a problem and you need help. Messed up, for sure, but what made it worse was two things: it was right after I’d gone on a job interview at a design firm not too far from campus. That, and I never gave Byron that email address. He shouldn’t have known it.

  Needless to say, I didn’t get a callback from that interview. Am I being paranoid? Maybe.

  I did my best to forget and move on. I deleted him from my social networks and my phone. Not only did I not contact him again—I did my best not to think about him at all, as if just thinking of him might summon him again, like some demon. Things resolved themselves a few weeks later. My mom passed away. I sold her house and moved back to Buffalo.

  I managed to almost forget about the whole incident, until Isabelle Herrera contacted me out of the blue…

  I lower my phone. Is there any point in finishing? I know where it goes from here.

  The question is whether it’s all believable. A lot of things seem contrived—as if she was making connections where there were none. But with everything else…

  A small cloud pulls over the sun. The dr
egs of coffee in my cup are cold. I gather everything on the tray to take indoors but I barely have time to pick it up when the phone dings with a voicemail.

  Crap. Why didn’t it ring? I pick up the phone and listen, my heart speeding up unpleasantly.

  “Hello.” I recognize Lucy B.’s annoying vocal fry at once. “This message is for Connie Wilson. Dr. Hassan would like you to come in for an appointment as soon as possible.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  My peaceful morning blown to smithereens, I race to get dressed. It’s not until I’m already driving away from the house that I remember I’m supposed to be impeccable Connie Wilson, lawyer’s wife, and my outfit of T-shirt and jeans doesn’t suit at all. Whatever. I don’t want to waste time, and they probably won’t even notice.

  When I walk two blocks from where I parked, I see Lucy B.’s car in its usual spot, in the lot next to the clinic. It takes five minutes to find a pay phone but once I find one, I call the towing company and let them know that a car is parked illegally in the parking lot of my establishment and then hang up and take my time walking back to the clinic.

  Lucy looks at me unsuspectingly as I walk in, and I return the condescending smile she gives me before turning her attention back to the screen of her computer.

  “Excuse me,” I say in the most saccharine tone I can muster, “I just saw a car being towed from the lot. Little blue Honda? Is that the car of one of your patients, by any chance? You should probably warn them.”

  I hide my grin as she turns back to me, blood rushing away from her face. “Oh my God,” she groans, stretching out the vowels unnecessarily like she always does—gaaaaawd. “Oh no. Shit.” She realizes she swore out loud and looks at me with a panicked expression. “Sorry. One minute. I’ll be right back.”