Secret Lives of Second Wives

by Catherine Todd

  “What?” I asked.

  “Strela got a denial,” she said breathlessly.

  “Shit,” I said. My heart sank. I’d been hoping for a seamless approval. It was unwise to count on anything from the INS; each agent is, by the organization’s own admission, something of a loose cannon, and the visa-classification process was anything but scientific. Nobody could really stop you if you wanted to reject an applicant because your baby sister once got stood up by someone with a Russian-sounding last name. Still, Alexei had a good case, and now I was going to have to respond to a bunch of issues before he got approved. “You mean a kickback,” I corrected her automatically. “They have to give you a chance to respond before you get a denial.”

  “I know that, Lynn,” she said. “But nevertheless it is a denial. See for yourself.”

  I took the paper she was holding. “Jesus, you’re right,” I said. “It must be some officer who doesn’t know what he’s doing. They don’t even give any reasons.” I turned the documents around to see if by chance I was missing something. “I can’t believe this,” I said.

  “What will you do?” Brooke asked.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “Try to check it out, I guess. If I can’t pin it down, I suppose we can always refile, but the backlog is already huge, and Alexei could run out of time.”

  “I thought he was extending his H-1,” she said.

  “Well, it’s complicated,” I told her.

  “Okay,” she said. “Let me know if I can do anything to help.”

  I looked at her with surprise. “That’s very kind, but it would hardly be fair. I’m not even paying you,” I said.

  “I know, but I’m not exactly busy,” she said.

  “Well, thanks,” I told her. “How’s the job search going?” No one had called me for references, so I had an idea, but I thought it would be polite to ask anyway.

  She made a face. “They seem to like my résumé, but when I go to an interview …” She looked at me. “Lynn, I know you’ll tell me the truth. Is there something about me that turns people off?”

  I had to bite my tongue, literally, to keep from answering that one. After all, we were still crammed together into a small space, and absolute truth in a situation like this was probably dangerous. “Um …” I began.

  “I mean, I know I come across as really smart, but I don’t intend to show up the interviewers. It’s just that some of them are so geeky. Do you think that could be it?”

  “Very likely,” I said solemnly.

  She sighed. “You can’t imagine what a burden it’s been all my life to be labeled gifted,” she said.

  “I guess not,” I agreed.

  “THEY KNOW,” Alexei said, when I told him. “Someone’s throwing up roadblocks.”

  We were sitting on a blanket having a picnic lunch in a beautiful little park in the foothills of the coastal mountains, an informality that was entirely suggestive and entirely my fault. Since the park was open only to Palo Alto residents, there was almost no one there in the middle of the week. (You can’t afford to live in Palo Alto unless you work.) As I was now a resident of Los Altos, I hadn’t been there in years, but today there was no one at the entrance checking IDs. The park brought back all kinds of memories. Plus, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t run into anyone I knew. Despite being the instigator of this déjeuner sur l’herbe, I felt guilty over possibilities that were becoming increasingly less distant.

  “You can’t know that,” I told him. “The INS isn’t a scientific organization. They screw up all the time.”

  “What makes you think scientific organizations don’t screw up?” he asked with a smile.

  “All the more reason not to jump to conclusions. It’s probably just a mistake.”

  He shook his head. “I wish I could believe that.”

  “Then try to, at least till I investigate,” I told him. “We can always refile if we have to. Aren’t Russians supposed to be notoriously pessimistic?”

  “Fatalistic,” he corrected me. “Just like lawyers are supposed to be sharks. There’s some truth behind every stereotype, don’t you think?”

  “Not that one. Lawyers are always getting a bad rap,” I said.

  He brushed my cheek with his finger, which caused a surge of sensation—neither unexpected nor unwelcome—all the way to the soles of my feet. “Not this one,” he said.

  “Alexei …” I drifted off, enmeshed in some dazed state of desire. I was unable to think. Scratch that. I didn’t want to think.

  “I don’t want to go back, Lynn,” he said. “The last time I was there, a woman tried to sell herself to me for three dollars. When I refused, she offered to throw in her younger sister, who looked about ten.” He shook his head. “Some Mafia guy lives in my old house. I saw the BMW out in front. Everyone is depressed. I don’t want to go back there,” he repeated.

  I touched his hand. “I’ve told you before I’ll help you any way I can,” I said.

  “I know that,” he said. He put his hand behind my head and drew me to him. He kissed me and then pulled back, seeking permission. I imagine I gave it to him, because the next one, the definitive kiss, left no questions unanswered. He put his arms around me as if he were encircling me in a cloak. “I didn’t misread you, then?” he asked.

  “No,” I told him. “I’m afraid you didn’t.” I’d probably been sending up semaphores of lust. My self-discipline had deserted me entirely, and I was waving good-bye to it with unbridled enthusiasm.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “We don’t have to do anything. We don’t have to decide anything right now. There’s time.”

  I could feel the dry grass poking up through the blanket, tickling my arm. I’d almost forgotten we were outside. I’d almost forgotten just about everything. “The thing is…,” I said, looking into his eyes, which were very dark. You could lose yourself in those eyes, if you weren’t careful. “The thing is, I don’t want to wait.”

  I felt him relax against me. The possibilities were now clear. He stroked my hair. “Shall we…?”

  “I don’t know where to go,” I said. It seemed such a ridiculous thing to be hung up on, now that I was going to go charging into unknown, possibly life-changing territory, consequences be damned. But even in my love-bead days I would have drawn the line at having sex in a public park.

  “I do,” he told me. He looked at the untouched picnic lunch. “Do you want to eat first?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  27

  Alexei lived in the poolside guesthouse of a Stanford professor and his wife, the ex-CFO of a dot-com business that had suffered the stereotypical rise and fall. They’d bought the house on her options exercised and sold in boom times, so they were safe. The professor paid his debt to the underclass by renting out his guesthouse at a nominal charge to visiting faculty or postdocs.

  It was very nice, although I was in no mood to evaluate the furnishings. All the life in my body had collected in one place, and I had to bite my lip to keep from crying out when he touched me.

  Don’t analyze this, I told myself. There were forces welling up that waylaid my conscience. I wanted just to be wanted, even if only this once, without anything else getting in the way. I wanted to surrender.

  So I did.

  Afterward we lay dozing on the bed, the afternoon sun coming in through the blinds. I tried to lie perfectly still; as soon as he woke up, I’d have to start thinking about leaving. The first departure, and probably not the last. I could see into a future of big lies and little ones, the probable unhappy denouement.

  Russian joke:

  A popular French magazine held a contest for the best short essay describing a typical morning.

  The winning entry: “I wake up, eat breakfast, put on my clothes, and go home.”

  Eventually he woke up and stretched—I’d been lying on his arm. He looked at me and smiled. “What are you thinking?” he said.

  “I was thinking how nice it would be to be French.”


  He propped himself up on one elbow, laughing. “Why would you think that?”

  “Because then I could be puritanical about food and philosophical about sex, instead of the other way around,” I told him.

  “Lynn—” he said.

  I put a finger over his lips. “Don’t talk about it. Not just now.”

  He nodded.

  Now that I had more leisure for inspection, I noticed that the room was very plainly furnished, like a motel on an interstate. There was nothing personal about it except the shelves of books with titles in several languages. It had the air of being inhabited by someone ready to move on at a moment’s notice. At least it was neat, a quality I now realized I had undervalued at the outset of two marriages.

  I looked at my watch. “I have to go,” I told him.

  “I know,” he said, pressing his hand to my face.

  “Alexei,” I asked, “have you ever read Anna Karenina?”

  “No, I haven’t,” he said.

  “Neither have I,” I lied.

  “I HOPE YOU DON’T MIND,” Janet said when I opened my front door and discovered her enthroned in my living room, “but we had some things to discuss, and Jack preferred to meet here.”

  “Not at all,” I said shortly. There was so much going on in my head that all I wanted was to be alone.

  Jack looked irritated, but not at me. “Come and join us,” he said. “Please.”

  Janet looked around with an air of mild approbation. “I’ve been meaning to tell you, Lynn, you’ve done such nice things with the house. I know none of that was Jack’s doing.” She cast him the fond, tolerant look an overindulgent owner might bestow upon a mischievous dog, which irritated me.

  “Actually, it was mostly the decorator’s doing,” I said. “But thank you.”

  “I tried to reach you all afternoon,” Jack said, “but your cell phone was off.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I turned it off at lunch, and then I must have forgotten to turn it back on.”

  “I called your office,” he said.

  “I’ve been trying to track down some information about a client, and I had a meeting,” I told him. How easily the lie came to mind, and how hard it was to say it. I suppose that if things went on, lying would become second nature. The realization made me intensely uncomfortable.

  “Well,” Jack said, “Janet said you suggested we go over the finances for the wedding, and I thought you’d want to be in on the discussion.”

  “Thank you,” I said, “but whatever you two decide is all right with me. As long as everyone is in full possession of the facts.”

  Janet looked as if she’d bitten into a lemon. “I hadn’t realized, of course, about the tax problem.”

  Jack and I said nothing.

  She picked up her glass and stared into it, then took a big swig. “Vodka tonic,” she said to me, by way of explanation. “No one makes them like Jack.”

  I bet.

  “The thing is,” she continued, “a lot of the arrangements are already made. I’m afraid we planned things on a rather grander scale than if we’d known …”

  I refused to help her. I didn’t look at Jack but kept my gaze focused on her face. I hope she squirmed, at least inwardly.

  “The problem is, you see, that it’s much too late to cancel now, so I’m afraid …”

  Jack leaned forward. I was afraid he was going to fall for that line without protest, so I intervened, although I had promised myself that I wouldn’t. “The wedding is still months away, Janet. There would be cancellation fees for the caterers and the room, but we’re certainly not locked in to the arrangements.”

  Janet played her trump card. “I suppose it might be possible,” she sighed, “although of course we’d never find decent alternatives at this late date. Poor Meredith really has her heart set on this wedding, and it meant so much to her that her dad wanted to give it to her. She’ll be very disappointed.”

  A look from Jack silenced me before I could respond. Now I understood why it was a bad idea for people to carry weapons. If I’d had something, I probably would have used it on her.

  “How much have you committed for so far?” Jack asked.

  Janet raised a fluttery hand. “About forty thousand dollars, I guess.”

  A mere drop in the bucket. Jack paled ever so slightly. “And how much of that can you and Valerio put up?” he asked.

  She had the grace to look embarrassed. “Well, Valerio and I aren’t exactly on the best of terms right now, so it’s just me, I’m afraid.” She consulted the ceiling. “I guess I might be able to come up with, oh, two thousand. Maybe twenty-five hundred.”

  That left a mere thirty-eight thousand—thiry-seven five, if she sold a few more pots. “What about Meredith?” I asked.

  Janet looked at me with, I thought, feigned horror. “What about her?”

  “Can she contribute? If an extravagant occasion means that much to her, perhaps she—”

  Jack laid a hand on my arm. “Lynn, we won’t ask my daughter to pay for her own wedding,” he said.

  I had definitely said “contribute to,” not “pay for,” but I reluctantly held my tongue.

  “She’s a teacher, Lynn,” Janet reminded me. “She doesn’t make very much money.”

  Which was precisely why Jack had been helping support her since she started work. You had to ask yourself whether saddling him with a mountain of debt for a wedding more befitting a society princess than a member of a profession supposedly marked by altruism was really an appropriate act of gratitude. Nevertheless, I had made a mistake. I had nudged Jack into an alliance with Janet, and if I weren’t very careful, I’d find myself looking like the bad guy. I just didn’t think I had the stamina for that kind of battle, at least not at the moment.

  I stood. “Well, I’ll just leave you two to sort things out,” I said. I couldn’t help adding, “I imagine there can be some room for compromise.”

  Jack stood, too, so Janet had no choice but to get up. “I’ve got to be going anyway,” she said. “I promised Merry we’d go shopping for some curtains for her apartment.” She looked around the living room. “Such a shame she and Justin can’t afford a house. It wouldn’t have to be anything grand, just something modest.” Her look said, Like this one. Since the median price for a house in Santa Clara County was well over five hundred thousand dollars, even “modest” was far beyond reach. But I knew what she was getting at: Wouldn’t it be nice if you bought her a house?

  “We’ll get back to you about the wedding,” Jack said.

  Janet looked from one to the other of us. “Yes,” she said. “Talk it over.”

  I WENT INTO THE KITCHEN and started taking out the ingredients for a salad. I set them on the counter precisely, like surgical instruments. Jack came into the kitchen with the drink glasses, but I kept on rinsing and chopping.

  “It’s my night to cook,” he said.

  “That’s okay,” I said, without looking up. “I’m really not hungry. I’ll fix us both a salad, and then you can have whatever else you want.”

  “I’m not very hungry either,” he said.

  “Just a salad, then?”

  “Fine,” he said.

  Chop chop.

  “Lynn,” he said after a moment. “I know you’re angry.”

  “I’m not angry,” I said.

  “What, then?”

  “Do you really want to go into this now?” I asked him.

  “Janet said we should talk things over,” he pointed out.

  I put the knife down, extremely carefully. “Otherwise we wouldn’t be talking?”

  “I didn’t mean it that way,” he said. He sighed. “Why don’t you just say what you’re thinking?”

  Not a good idea. I dried my hands on a paper towel and turned to face him. “Okay,” I said. “For the record, I’m not angry, I’m … dismayed.”

  “Dismayed,” he repeated.

  “Yes,” I said. I tried to choose my words with care. “At the way we’re be
ing manipulated into paying for a wedding we can’t afford.”

  His jaw tightened. “I’m perfectly well aware of what Janet is doing. This isn’t about her; it’s about Merry. And anyway, I’ve told you this is my responsibility, not yours.”

  “So you keep saying. Is that supposed to be comforting? We’re supposed to be partners. A team. A couple.”

  “We are, in most things. But I had a life before you. I have obligations to my children. You must understand that.”

  “Of course I do. It seems to have escaped your attention that I had a life before you, too. Obligation is a two-way street, Jack. And what I see is your ex-wife egging Meredith on in ways that show very little consideration for either your opinion or our finances. You can’t expect me to like it.”

  He ran his hands through his hair. “I know you had—have—a life of your own,” he said, “but you didn’t have children. It’s not the same. I’m sorry if you’re hurt or angry, but I can’t ignore my children’s needs, not even for you.”

  “There isn’t any question of ignoring their needs,” I said, knowing his visceral dislike of confrontation and trying to control my own anger. “But really, Jack, even though you want to please your daughter, even though you want to make it up to her for whatever it is you think you might have done to make her life less than perfect, I think you really have to tell her that you can’t afford to finance this wedding on such a grand scale.”

  “I don’t think I can do that,” he said. “I’m not even sure it’s the right thing to do.”

  I turned back toward the counter and dumped the contents of the chopping board into the salad bowl. “Then there’s nothing more to be said, is there?”