Secret Lives of Second Wives

by Catherine Todd

  “What happened?” I asked. Heart attack, I thought, or even a stroke. Or a drunk-driving accident. After last night I’d believe anything.

  She shook her head. “It’s not clear. He’s in intensive care, that’s all I know. Since last night or early this morning. Brooke said she’d call when she found out anything.”

  “What hospital?” I asked.

  “El Camino.”

  “Good,” I said. El Camino was a “normal” hospital. Stanford Hospital was cutting-edge, but you had to put up with platoons of med students peeking into your orifices at all hours in the name of education. “I’m on my way,” I said.

  “Really?” she asked.

  “Of course. If Brooke or Adam calls before I get there, tell—”

  The phone cut me off.

  Ronnie and I both looked at it. “I’ll get it,” I said.

  “I don’t know anything,” Adam said, after I’d answered. “We’re coming back to the office. His condition is described as ‘guarded,’ but they won’t let us in to see him. No visitors.”

  “Did they say what happened?” I asked.

  “Just that they won’t release any information except to family. Does his daughter know he’s in the hospital, do you think?”

  “I’m sure the hospital will have called her.” I did not add that he very well might be under investigation by the DOJ and not exactly unsupervised.

  “Oh, okay,” Adam said woodenly.

  I sighed. “I’ll give her a call, just in case,” I told him.

  “Thanks, Lynn.”

  WHILE RONNIE SEARCHED FOR THE PHONE NUMBER, I called Kay at work. “Did you change your mind about a house?” she asked, before I could say anything.

  “Not until there’s a change in our finances,” I told her. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” she said. “That was insensitive. I don’t know what comes over me. It must be something in the air in this office. I keep hearing ‘ask for the sale, ask for the sale’ in my head, and the words just pop right out of my mouth. What can I do for you?”

  I told her I wanted to find out about Harrison. “Can you ask Michael?” Her husband was a big deal in orthopedic surgery, so of course he could find out anything he wanted to, if he was willing to try. Managed care hadn’t changed things that much.

  She called me back in a few minutes. “Oh, Lynn, I’m really sorry to tell you this. Michael says they have him down as attempted suicide.”

  My throat closed. Right after he called me. As a confirmation of my worst fears and suspicions, it was pretty definitive. “How?” I asked, scarcely able to get the word out.

  “Sleeping pills and booze, apparently,” she said. “Oh, sorry—I guess that sounds callous. But it was obvious at Jack’s party that he had a drinking problem.”

  “I guess so,” I told her. “I’d just never thought it affected his work.”

  She made the noncommittal noise people do when they think you’re a naive fool and don’t want to say so.

  “You sound exhausted,” she said after a moment.

  “Couldn’t sleep,” I told her. There was no point in going into why, at least not yet. I still needed to sort things out in my own mind. “Um, I may not make it to your group tonight. There’s a lot going on here.”

  “Try,” she said firmly. “There will always be a lot going on. If you aren’t positively at death’s door from some communicable disease, I’m picking you up as we agreed.”

  I was silent.

  “Please,” she said.

  “You’re supposed to say, ‘You’ll thank me later,’ ” I said.

  “You’ll thank me later,” she said. She laughed. “That actually happens to be true.”

  “Okay,” I told her. “I’ll try.”

  HARRISON’S DAUGHTER, Jennifer Grady, was a litigator in a big-time law firm. “Thank you for calling,” she said when I had tracked her down at her office. “But the police called me last night.”

  I told her I hadn’t seen him and didn’t know anything concrete, but that in all events I was sure he would want her to know he was in the hospital.

  “Are you?” she asked, somewhat curtly. “I’m not. I’m sure he would prefer no one knew. He tried to kill himself, did you know?”

  “I did,” I said, “but it isn’t common knowledge here.”

  “Who did you say this was?” she asked.

  I explained, again, my relationship to her father.

  “Oh, right,” she said. “I remember now. Are you under arrest, too?”

  I gasped. I began to see why Harrison was not close to his only child. “Is Harrison under arrest?” I asked.

  “He will be, if he recovers. He got the news last night.” She paused. “I see that you aren’t asking me what he’s under arrest for,” she observed.

  I breathed out slowly. Some of the guilt I felt about being the last person to talk to him before he tried to off himself evaporated. “No,” I said. In fact, I had a million questions, but not for her. Be careful, I told myself.

  “Anyway,” she said suspiciously, “if you are who you say you are, shouldn’t you have known that?”

  I pictured her sitting at her desk in an Armani suit, dressed for combat. I tried not to dislike her on the grounds that animosity ought to be conceived face-to-face, but I abandoned my principles. “Actually,” I said, “if what you say is true, I’m the one your father left holding the bag.”

  “I thought as much,” she said, although she could have fooled me. “I’m sorry about that.” She didn’t sound the least bit sincere. “Dad’s been on a downward spiral ever since my mother left him. He can’t seem to get it together. To tell you the truth, it’s been rather embarrassing.”

  I thought that was putting it mildly, under the circumstances.

  “In any case, I’m sure it’s best we don’t get into this further. I wouldn’t want to jeopardize his defense in any way. I’m sure you understand.”

  “Well,” I said, “I won’t take more of your time. I’m not sure they’ll let me in to see your father, but if they do—”

  “You want to see him?” She sounded surprised.

  “We have things to discuss. Eventually. For the moment I just want to see how he is. If I can get in, do you want me to tell him you’ll be coming?”

  “God, no,” she said. “Don’t do that. I’ve got a big trial coming up. I don’t know when I’ll be able to get away.” I could hear a pen (or something else) tap-tapping against the phone. Maybe it was her fingernail. “He won’t be expecting me,” she said after a moment. “We haven’t seen each other in three years.”

  “I see,” I said. “Is there any message, then?”

  She appeared to think this over.

  “No, no message,” she said finally.

  10

  Intensive-care units are generic and interchangeable, like airport lounges. I went up to the nurses’ station and asked for Harrison’s room.

  “Family only,” said the nurse, with a hint of inquiry.

  I nodded. I appreciated the way the exchange was phrased, giving me an out and the hospital an out, in case I proved to be something less than a blood relative. I didn’t even have to lie. “Thank you,” I said.

  “He’s probably sleeping,” she added. She looked at me, the family (as she thought) of someone who’d attempted suicide. “Don’t stay too long,” she said. “Don’t upset him.”

  “I won’t,” I promised, but as I walked toward his room, I wondered if I would. I’d thought only about Harrison, all alone in his despair and weakness, but then I realized that if it were me, I wouldn’t have wanted anyone to see me in that condition, particularly not someone I’d injured. I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it before. I hesitated in the doorway, suddenly certain that it would look as if I were coming to gloat. I turned around to go.

  “Lynn?”

  Harrison was pale and puffy as cotton, a featureless organic receptacle for bags and tubes and blinking monitors that pulsed and beeped
and bubbled under their own steam.

  “Hi,” I said softly. “I’m sorry to wake you up. I just came by to see if you were okay.”

  He made a small sound that might have been a laugh. “I’m okay,” he whispered.

  “They were worried about you,” I said. “Brooke and Adam and Ronnie.”

  “Do they know?” he said.

  I wondered which he meant. About the suicide attempt. About the faked documents. I shook my head.

  “Don’t …”

  Don’t tell, he meant. “I won’t,” I said. “But they’ll find out … everything … eventually.”

  “I know,” he said. He sighed gently. “I botched it.”

  I wondered if he’d really meant to die or if it was a sort of dramatic apology gone wrong. I wondered if he knew himself. I certainly couldn’t ask him. It was frustrating, because there was so much I needed to know.

  “Lynn?”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you mad at me?” He sounded like an eight-year-old who’d forgotten to make his bed.

  I didn’t know what to say, under the circumstances. “We don’t have to talk about this. I’m going. I just wanted to be sure—” I stopped, not even certain myself what I meant.

  “Are you?” he persisted.

  “Yes, of course I am,” I told him finally. “What did you expect?” I came closer and lowered my voice. “I’m not here to gloat, or to upset you. We shouldn’t be talking about this. You have to get well first.”

  Harrison settled back into the pillow with the appearance of satisfaction. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for not lying to me.”

  “I never lied to you,” I said, with less restraint than I probably should have.

  “Come back …,” he said. “Come back … later. We’ll talk.”

  “Harrison, do you even have a lawyer?”

  He nodded. “Last night … before …”

  “Well, if your lawyer permits, eventually I need to know what happened and why.”

  He turned his head. “Fuck my lawyer,” he said. “I’m a dead man. I can do what I want.”

  “We’ll see,” I told him. “Get some rest.”

  “Promise you’ll come back,” he said weakly.

  I nodded, but his eyes were closed. “All right,” I said.

  “Lynn?” he said again. “Are you okay?”

  I didn’t know how to answer that. Harrison wanted absolution, but I wouldn’t grant it. It would have been so easy to lie, to tell him, Yes, I’m okay, when he was desperately sick and probably sorry for whatever he’d done. It would have been easy, and I’m not sure why I wouldn’t say it, except that it wasn’t true. I was discovering a certain hardness in myself I didn’t entirely approve of, but I didn’t altogether dislike it either.

  “I’m not sure yet,” I told him. “I’m still waiting to find out.”

  BROOKE AND ADAM WERE BACK AT THE OFFICE when I got there. “How was he?” Adam said when I walked in the door.

  “Did you get to see him?” Brooke asked. “They wouldn’t tell us anything.”

  “I didn’t find out anything definite either,” I said. “No visitors, they said, except for family. But I gather he’s out of danger.”

  Adam looked at me quizzically but didn’t say anything.

  “I told you she wouldn’t get in,” Brooke said.

  I ignored her. “Unfortunately, Harrison’s health isn’t the only issue,” I said. “If you could all come into the office, we need to have a talk.”

  “Even me?” Adam asked. He was nonlegal staff and didn’t usually attend firm meetings.

  “Everybody,” I said. “We’re all in this together.”

  “Uh-oh,” Adam said.

  “Precisely,” I told him.

  AFTERWARD I CLOSED THE DOOR to my office. I wanted—needed—to talk to Jack. He still had no idea what was going on.

  His cell phone was turned off.

  “Oh, honey, he’s in a meeting in San Jose,” Doris, his secretary, said. “If it’s important, we can have him paged.” Doris always called me “honey,” even though she was only ten years my senior. She was the dream secretary—motherly, kind, efficient, and happily married. I loved her.

  “No, it’s nothing that can’t wait,” I said reluctantly. “Do you know what time the meeting’s over?”

  “Umm, I think he said something about a dinner afterward. I thought he left you a message, honey. Did you check?”

  “I’ve been out,” I said.

  “You’re not working too hard, are you? I know how that husband of yours drives himself. I hope you two newlyweds are finding time for some fun.”

  I smiled. She made us sound like a couple of oversexed twenty-year-olds. “We manage, I guess,” I told her.

  “Good,” she said. I wondered if she was trying to tell me something, but both of us were too discreet to pursue it further. There are rules for such conversations, and I didn’t want to make her uncomfortable by breaking them.

  “Anyway, how are you?” I asked her.

  “Still employed,” she said dryly.

  “Me, too,” I said. At least for the moment.

  “You go, girl.”

  JACK’S MESSAGE said that since I had already said I “would be out,” he’d arranged to have dinner with some potential clients in the City. Like Doris, I knew how hard he was pushing to get business for the company. Still, he shone on such occasions. He attracted people because he didn’t flatter them or fake an interest—his enthusiasm was genuine. He could extract something to admire from the most dismally self-centered marketing type. I’d seen him do it. Since I myself tended to lapse into fruitless silences on such occasions, I admired his gift.

  I picked up the phone and dialed Kay’s number. “It looks like I’m definitely on for tonight,” I told her. At least I wouldn’t be home alone, brooding over my professional woes.

  “You won’t be sorry,” she promised. “Oh, I said that already, didn’t I?”

  “Yes,” I said, “but I don’t mind hearing it again.”

  11

  The Anne Boleyn Society met in the private room of a local restaurant. Kay had told me they started out meeting in member homes, but nobody felt comfortable in an atmosphere in which the husband or the stepchildren might overhear. After I got there, I understood why.

  It’s tough being a trophy. Marla Maples has a lot to answer for. The world thinks of second wives as hot little pommes de terre who lure previously faithful but chronologically susceptible husbands away from their virtuous original mates with sexual practices that while not technically illegal, stretch the limits of respectability. Granted, such stereotypes exist for a reason. But for every scheming sexpot dressed by Victoria’s Secret, somewhere there’s a Mrs. de Winter living in the shadow of Rebecca and harassed, to boot, by a passel of antagonistic stepchildren.

  Arm candy was not in evidence this evening. Kay handed me a name tag and an oversize glass of Ridge Zinfandel, potent and dark as sin itself. “Relax,” she said, reading my mind. “I’m driving.”

  The libations had already been flowing fairly freely, if appearances were any indication. By the time we sat around in a circle, sorority-house style, tongues were loosened. “Who wants to start?” Kay asked.

  I stared down into my wineglass, reminded of school. I hoped nobody would call on me if I didn’t make eye contact.

  “I’d like to introduce my friend Lynn Bartlett,” Kay said after a moment. “Her husband’s ex-wife showed up uninvited at his fiftieth birthday party.”

  There was a chorus of sympathetic murmurs. I flashed Kay a look and she shrugged. What did you expect?

  Now that Kay had established my bona fides, my marital history was apparently fair game. “What did you do?” asked Melanie, a very self-possessed-looking blonde of about my age. She was sporting a “look at me” tennis bracelet and a diamond that would not have been sneered at by the sultan of Brunei in his palmiest days.

  “Not much,” I said,


  This was apparently the wrong answer. There was a reproachful silence.

  “It didn’t seem appropriate to make a scene,” I added defensively.

  Melanie shook her head sadly. “That’s what she’s counting on,” she said.

  “What did your husband do?” asked a worried-looking older woman. Her name tag was smeared, and I couldn’t read it.

  I swallowed. “He, um, kissed her on the cheek and asked her to dance,” I said. “His children had brought her, and he was trying to put a good face on it.”

  “How did you feel about that?” someone asked me.

  I squirmed. “I didn’t like it, of course, but it seemed to me the only graceful way to behave.”

  “Does your husband’s ex-wife send him letters?” Melanie asked after a moment.

  I nodded. “Postcards. Occasionally.”

  “Does she call him up when something needs fixing?”

  “She did that once,” I admitted.

  “Recently?”

  I lowered my head.

  They exchanged looks and nodded, even the elderly, worried-looking one. “She wants him back,” Melanie said. “Or at least she doesn’t want to let him go.”

  “She’s married,” I pointed out.

  “Then she wants two,” she said.

  I laughed, but no one else did.

  “And his children are probably in on it,” said a woman whose name tag read DR. BILLINGS. She saw me look at it and said, “I’m sorry. I’m so used to writing it this way for staff meetings at the hospital. I’m Claire.” She sighed. “My husband’s first wife found something she needed to call about every single Friday night, particularly when it was our weekend with the kids. If she didn’t call, the kids called her and left messages, so then she had an excuse for calling back. Sometimes she left nasty messages. The kids fought me tooth and nail about everything for three years. My husband …”

  There was a sigh of expectation. Everyone but me seemed to know what was coming next.

  “My husband just withdrew….”

  “They do that,” Melanie said sagely.

  “And let it happen,” Claire said. “He refused to do anything about either the kids or his ex-wife.”