Secret Lives of Second Wives

by Catherine Todd

  “They feel guilty,” the older woman said.

  “That’s right, Lorraine,” said Claire. “Everybody wants to be first with everybody else, and children don’t like it when their father’s attention shifts away from them to somebody else. Wives don’t like to be left. I don’t blame them for that. But I did blame my husband for not putting our relationship first and for letting his ex-wife and children treat me rudely.”

  “So what did you do?” I couldn’t help asking.

  “I told the ex-wife that her venom was just fueling my vigilance,” she said grimly. “And then I gave my husband an ultimatum.”

  I waited.

  She spread her hands wide, an umpire signaling You’re out. “And now he’s my ex-husband,” she said grimly.

  How comforting. This was like one of those “Mrs. Lincoln” jokes. When were the helpful tips coming? “That’s awful,” I said.

  She shrugged.

  “I’m getting divorced,” Lorraine said.

  Attention shifted in her direction with a sudden, communal gasp.

  “What happened?” someone asked, a shade too eagerly.

  Lorraine sighed. “You know that Robert had a stroke?”

  A few people nodded polite acknowledgment.

  “Well, while he was in the nursing home for rehabilitation, Frederick—that’s his son—came and checked him out. The staff told me Frederick said he was taking him home to Minnesota.”

  “Didn’t anyone call you?” Kay asked.

  Lorraine shrugged, with all the dignity and the passivity of the helpless elderly.

  “Frederick had Robert’s power of attorney. He told them not to tell me anything until he’d left. I got the divorce papers last week.”

  “You could fight it,” I told her.

  “Lynn’s an attorney,” Kay said.

  “I don’t know anything about that field,” I added quickly. “But there are people who could help you. And in any case you need representation for the divorce.”

  “Truthfully, I don’t know if I want to fight it or not,” she said. “Do I want to sit in a courtroom in Minneapolis for weeks fighting over my husband’s ruined body? I’m not sure I have the stamina for that. Besides, I don’t even know that the divorce wasn’t Robert’s idea. They say that people change after a stroke….” She shook her head. “It’s a shame, though. I would have taken good care of him….”

  “At least make sure you’re taken care of financially,” I urged. “Does … Robert have any assets?”

  She looked at me and smiled. “Of course,” she said. “Why else do you think Frederick got him away so fast?”

  The other women murmured assent.

  “But I don’t want his money,” Lorraine said. “My first husband left me well enough off when he died. I wonder …” She looked at me. “My stepson asked me to send my wedding ring back,” she said. “Do you think I should?”

  “Was it a family heirloom or his mother’s diamond or anything like that?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Robert and I picked it out together,” she said, smiling at the memory.

  “Then tell your stepson to go f—” I stopped, surprised at my own vehemence. “Tell him no,” I said, more discreetly.

  Lorraine smiled.

  “Amen,” said Melanie.

  “ARE WE READY FOR THE CLOSING CEREMONY?” Kay asked. The glasses were empty, and the restaurant staff had once or twice poked their heads around the door. Since this was the Bay Area, not a single person had gone outside to smoke.

  “Closing ceremony” sent a little shiver down my spine. I hoped it didn’t involve smashing the wineglasses into the fireplace or a unity pledge or anything like that. I have always felt uncomfortable with coerced demonstrations of camaraderie, particularly if they involve broken glass.

  I looked at Kay.

  “For our new members and guests,” she said, “the closing ceremony is just for each person to say a sentence or two. It’s a saying you like, or what’s on your mind right now. Something you’d like to share.”

  I wondered if I could get away with Thank you for having me. I’d found the evening interesting, in the way that automobile accidents and typhoons are interesting, but I’m not sure how helpful it was to uncover everyone else’s misery. Still, I had to admit there was a lot of combined experience in the room, and it might have been useful to find out how other people handled problems like, for example, moving into your new husband’s house, the one his kids had walked in and out of for years without keys, so that you felt like an interloper, a narcissist whose requests for privacy were met with uncomprehending stares. That sort of thing.

  Maybe when I got the rest of my life straightened out, I’d come back.

  “Who wants to start?” Kay asked. This was apparently rhetorical, a part of the ritual, because a moment later she said, “I will, then. I haven’t shared much tonight, but here’s something I heard that I liked: ‘Women mourn, men replace.’ ”

  There was a curious murmur of assent among the Replacements.

  “I saw this on a Web site,” said a slender silver-blonde with celebrity hair, the kind of ’do that reflects better on the hairdresser than on the client. “‘Give me your tired, your poor …’ ”

  “That’s on the Statue of Liberty,” Lorraine said.

  The blonde shrugged. “Well, something like that. Anyway, it ends ‘your angry children yearning to break me.’ It was on a poster.”

  No one said anything.

  Dr. Billings sat up straight. “In the animal kingdom, replacement mates will often dispose of their predecessor’s young,” she said. I couldn’t tell if it was meant to be a joke or not.

  “I just want to say,” Lorraine offered quietly, “that no matter what it took, I would have taken care of him.”

  “Think about it. So much of remarriage has to be built from loss,” Melanie said.

  “Lynn?” Kay prompted me after a moment.

  I opened my mouth to express some courteous platitude. They were all watching me.

  “I wasn’t prepared,” I said, surprising myself. “I thought all I had to do was be nice to everybody and we’d all get along.” I swallowed.

  Lorraine reached over and patted my hand.

  “I just never thought it would be this hard,” I said.

  “Welcome to the club,” Kay said.

  12

  I might have to close the firm,” I said to Jack over the breakfast table. I kept my voice scarcely above a whisper—we usually had privacy at breakfast because Patrick slept in till nine or ten, but I wasn’t taking any chances. Since the night I’d challenged him about the cat, Patrick had more or less stayed out of my way, so long as no one else wanted to watch TV in the family room at night. Every morning I picked up the remnants of his midnight snack and disposed of them before Jack could see, so it didn’t become an issue. It’s only six months, I told myself. Brewer returned reluctantly to his bed in the laundry room, and we all tiptoed around on little cat feet.

  Jack looked up from the Wall Street Journal. “Oh, Lynn,” he said. “It can’t really be as bad as that? What did the INS say?” Since I’d told him the news about Harrison, he’d refused to believe that things were as bleak as I’d painted them.

  “Which time? I’ve had conversations with four different people so far.” I speared a bite of out-of-season melon, lifted my fork, then set it down again. “I think … I hope … they realize I didn’t have any part of faking the documents, so they won’t come after me with criminal charges.”

  “Good God,” Jack said.

  “But,” I added, “I still have to go through the affected clients on a case-by-case basis. For some who obviously qualify, the INS will grant the visas or green cards anyway. But it’s arbitrary, and they won’t do it for everybody, so I’ll have to start all over with the application process, and of course I can’t charge for it. And I have to go to Kojima Bank and tell them that two of their top executives are de facto illegal, after they’ve al
ready paid for their visas. How is the firm’s reputation going to survive that?”

  “Have you said anything to the rest of the firm?”

  “There’s just the three of them,” I reminded him. “They know about the problem with the documents, of course, but none of them know exactly how serious it is yet. I was hoping to get more information from Harrison after he got out of the hospital, but he says his lawyer advises him not to speak with me. He’s under house arrest, and I think they’re working out a plea bargain,” I added bitterly.

  “I bet,” Jack said. “Don’t blame the lawyer for that. I’d advise the same. What I can’t understand is, why’d he do it? It’s not like the work’s that difficult.”

  I ignored the insult, which was probably not intended. “The most charitable explanation,” I said, “is that his drinking problem is worse than we thought. Maybe he had blackouts or something and forgot to file the paperwork, so he panicked and faked it.” My worst fear, the one I didn’t confide to Jack, was that the signs of slippage and alcohol abuse in the office had been there all along, and I’d missed them. I’d racked my brain, I’d discreetly queried the staff, but, on the whole, Harrison had covered his tracks well. At least until the very end. “It doesn’t really matter why he did it, does it?” I asked Jack. “The only thing I wonder is if he brought me in as partner to cover for him in some way. I just feel so used, not to mention really, really angry.”

  “I doubt he set you up, Lynn. Harrison doesn’t seem like that type somehow. Besides, he did try to kill himself. At least that shows some remorse.”

  “He didn’t seem like the type to fake documents either,” I pointed out. “Maybe he’s just sorry he got caught.” The truth is, I felt like a failure, too. Either I’d been duped and had failed to see it coming or Harrison had needed help and I’d failed to see that. One way or the other, there might have been something I could have done to have prevented disaster. I said, with more bravado than I felt, “I wish I could share your confidence, but I can’t be sure of anything other than that he left me with a big mess to clean up, an indeterminate number of probable malpractice actions to handle, and a financial situation we can ill afford.”

  “Well,” Jack said. His eyes drifted back to the newspaper. I had already learned that expressions of emotion were not something he was comfortable making, and the Financial Situation was practically off-limits.

  Nevertheless, I needed to know. “Sorry. I’ve been going on and on,” I said. “How’s your business doing?” Jack’s business was a software company that built navigation guides for consumers shopping on the Internet. It started with the recognition that as the number of Internet sites proliferated into the millions, there was a need for tools to help people navigate the World Wide Web more effectively. Unfortunately, since Internet commerce had suffered a setback, so had the company.

  “Fine,” he said.

  “Really?”

  He shrugged and looked pointedly down at the Journal.

  “What about our tax liability?” I asked.

  “I’m working on it,” he said without lifting his eyes.

  “Jack—”

  “Lynn, please.”

  I felt like the nagging wife in some late-night sitcom. I opened my mouth to protest, then closed it again.

  “Besides,” Jack added, “haven’t you got enough to worry about right now?” He grimaced. “Also—and I really regret the timing—but don’t forget my mother’s coming to visit this weekend.”

  My serotonin level was definitely plummeting. “You’re right, that is this weekend. With all this going on, I’d forgotten. Of course.” We’d invited her weeks before.

  He looked at me. “If you think we have to, we can always postpone it for a bit,” he said nobly and insincerely.

  “Nonsense,” I said. “She’s probably got nonrefundable reservations.”

  “Probably,” he agreed. He looked relieved. “If you’re sure …”

  I reminded myself that one of the things I’d admired about Jack was his loyalty to his family. I mean, would you really want to be a daughter like Jennifer Grady, who didn’t even show up when her father tried to commit suicide? Jack had a highly developed notion of what was owed to one’s relatives, whether they deserved it or not. I supposed I should be grateful.

  Clearly I was a failure at Family. I did not tend to see it as something that brought a lot of joy just in principle, probably as much a result of my own upbringing (my parents appeared to view most of their relatives as messy and unpleasant) as anything else. My family home had not been the scene of tearful annual reunions. We had holidays alone, just the three of us, in quiet contentment. My mother now lived in a retirement community in Arizona and traveled almost incessantly with her widow friends. I talked to her once a week, when she could sandwich me in between her golf games and bridge club, and she usually spent a week with me at Christmas. This year she was planning a holiday cruise. Someday her needs would change, but right now she treasured her independence and resented interference, which was perfectly all right with me.

  Moira Hughes, my mother-in-law, persisted in calling me “Janet,” except when she called on the phone, in which case she called me “May-I-speak-to-Jackson-please” without benefit of further salutation. According to Jack, her affection for his first wife had postdated the end of their marriage and had arisen not so much out of conversation or contact (there being none) but at the onset of Jack’s interest in me. Even so, I could easily have been cordial to her for a weekend, just not the one during which my entire professional career was threatening to disintegrate. But I didn’t think I had any choice.

  “Of course I’m sure,” I said. “It will be lovely to have her.”

  “No, it won’t,” Jack said. “I know she’s difficult.” He sighed. “We’ll have to have a family dinner,” he added. “I think we ought to go out, don’t you?”

  “Don’t be silly,” I said.

  THE TATTERED REMNANTS of Grady & Bartlett had taken the news on the chin, for the most part, and geared up to fight back. I kept buying doughnuts for our firm meetings (harder to find, now that the Bay Area had gotten so trendy) and coffee to ease the blow, and I set them in the middle of the conference table, as far out of my reach as possible.

  “So how bad is it?” Adam asked, getting straight to the point.

  “Bad,” I said. I told them everything I had learned from the INS.

  “As a matter of fact,” Brooke said, when I had sketched the outlines of our dilemma, “it’s not exactly news, Lynn.”

  Ronnie and even Adam nodded solemnly, so I knew she wasn’t lying.

  “It’s not?” I asked.

  Brooke had just had her nails manicured, I noticed, in a rather unflattering shade of maroon. “Well, no,” she said. “I called Harrison, and he—”

  “Harrison talked to you?” I asked, trying not to sound as flabbergasted as I felt.

  “Why wouldn’t he?” she said, smirking a little. “We were close. He’d already asked me to look out for things in his absence—”

  “Because he was under advice from counsel not to speak, for one thing,” I said, more sharply than I intended. I hadn’t told them about Harrison’s suicide attempt, and they hadn’t asked, although I’m sure they had guessed. I reached across the table and snatched up a chocolate cruller, my favorite. I needed it, bad.

  “Maybe he didn’t think that applied to Brooke, because she’s not a partner,” Ronnie said kindly. “Maybe he hoped to get a message to you that way.”

  “Maybe,” I said grimly. “So what did he say?”

  “He told me he was sorry if he’d screwed things up for me,” Brooke said. “And for the rest of you, of course.”

  Of course. “I don’t suppose he gave you any idea of how many bogus cases we’re dealing with?” I asked.

  “Well, he could hardly do that without admitting outright that he faked them,” she said, with some justice.

  “True,” I said, “but it would be much eas
ier if we knew how far back we have to go in checking documents.”

  “If we don’t find any problems or discrepancies, should we assume the documents are okay?” Ronnie asked.

  “I think we have to,” I said. “We don’t want the INS reevaluating every approved visa application unless it’s clear that there was something fake about the approvals. It’s bad enough as it is.”

  “So what happens now?” Adam asked soberly.

  I took a bite of the cruller, which turned to dust in my mouth. They all looked at me, waiting while I stalled. I knew what I had to say; I just didn’t want to say it.

  “I don’t want to lie to you,” I said finally. “I may not be able to hold the firm together. We have overhead, and we can’t charge for all the time we’ll have to spend working through this mess. As you know, the H-1B business was already slowing down because of the tech implosion, and—”

  “I can’t take a pay cut,” Brooke said.

  “I can,” said Adam.

  “Me, too,” added Ronnie.

  “Thanks,” I said, to those who deserved it. “Let’s just take this a day at a time. I have to go see Kojima Bank later this week, and then we’ll have to see how many clients we have left if the shit hits the fan. Probably ninety-five percent of our work is perfectly legitimate, but it’s the five percent in question that everyone will be worried about, and I can’t really blame them. Please be discreet about this, for heaven’s sake. And if anyone wants to start looking for another job right away, believe me, I’ll understand.”

  Brooke extended a crimson nail toward the plate of doughnuts and raked a finger’s width of vanilla icing off the top of the one on top. She raised her finger to her lips and licked it theatrically.

  “You know you can count on us, Lynn,” she said.

  “There is one bright spot,” Adam said.

  “What’s that?”

  “We might have a new client. That Dr. Strela is coming in this afternoon.”

  “I checked,” Brooke said. “Harrison got him a renewal on his H-1 a year ago.”

  “Maybe he’s heard something,” Ronnie said in a stricken voice.