Secret Lives of Second Wives

by Catherine Todd

  “Yes,” he said. “I know.”

  Like Cortés, I thought, and I remembered thinking the same thing when Jack asked me to marry him and my life with him was still an unimaginable, unpredictable shape. Remembering that, and realizing just what burning bridges would really mean, made my eyes fill again.

  “We can talk later,” Jack said.

  I nodded. “There’s time,” I said.

  He looked at me. “I thought we’d have the rest of our lives,” he said.

  36

  Alexei’s approval notice from the Vermont Service Center arrived on a Tuesday morning, a clear, beautiful late-summer day so fresh and unpolluted you could almost imagine the Peninsula full of fruit trees again. I had checked the INS phone update line the day before and learned the news, but until the papers arrived, I didn’t want to say anything. He might still have trouble with his adjustment of status, but the first hurdle—the big one—had been cleared. He was safe, at least for the moment. I turned the papers over and over in my hands, deciding what to say.

  The professor and his wife had planted citrus trees in big terra-cotta pots in the courtyard outside Alexei’s guesthouse. It must have been lovely in the spring. I sat down on a wrought-iron bench across from his door. The windows to the main house were shuttered, the occupants not, apparently, at home. I would not be observed. I sat waiting, letting the afternoon sun warm me, letting sensation crowd out thought. I closed my eyes.

  “Lynn? Are you all right?” Alexei’s voice roused me. “You said it was important,” he said.

  I tried to smile. “It is,” I said.

  “I came as fast as I could,” he said. He moved to unlock the door. “Come in,” he said.

  I stood up and followed him into the guesthouse. He regarded me with concern. “Can I get you anything? You look pale.”

  “Just some water,” I said. “Please.”

  He handed it to me, and I sat on the edge of the bed. He sat in a chair, facing me. Behind him there were open boxes, half-full of books. “You’re packing,” I observed.

  He looked at me with a clear, penetrating gaze. “I have to be ready,” he said. “For whatever happens.”

  My mouth was very dry. I swallowed some water and lifted the approval notice from my case. “Congratulations,” I said, handing it to him.

  He read it without changing expression. “What happens now?” he asked after a moment.

  “We withdraw the appeal to the earlier denial. Don’t leave the country—that’s important. We’ll apply for adjustment of status and see what happens.” I looked at him. “Did you contact a criminal attorney, as I suggested?”

  “Not yet,” he said.

  “Well, we can hope you won’t need one, but you don’t want to be unprepared, so don’t put it off. In the meantime you’re free to leave SLAC and move to New York and start your life there.”

  He handed the paper back to me. “That’s very good work, Lynn.”

  I took a deep breath. “I can’t go with you.” I looked away. It was out. It was done. It could never be unsaid.

  “I know,” he said.

  I looked at him. “You knew?”

  “You haven’t called, you don’t write except for terse little updates on my case. Of course I knew,” he said. “We’ve always known it would come to this, haven’t we?” He lifted his hand to touch me, but I drew back.

  “Please don’t,” I said. “I don’t think I can do this if you touch me.”

  “It’s all right,” he said. “I’ve told you, there’s no need to explain. I understand.”

  “How can you?” I asked. “I didn’t know myself what I had to do.”

  He shook his head, as if I were a naive child. “I have to confess that I lied to you,” he said.

  “About what?”

  He gave a small smile. “I have read Anna Karenina.”

  “So have I,” I said. I was parched, with the taste of dust in my throat. I pulled myself together. “I should be going,” I said.

  He stood. “All right.”

  “I’ll give you the name of someone in New York to see you through your adjustment of status after you get there,” I told him. “It might be better to use someone local.” I caught his look and added, “I would have done that anyway. Truthfully.”

  “All right,” he said again. “I trust you.”

  “Thank you for making this …”

  “Easy?” he asked, with a trace of bitterness.

  “No,” I told him. “Not easy.” I looked at him. “You know it’s not.” I tried not to think of him all alone again. “Will you be okay?” I asked.

  He smiled. “Of course.”

  I stood.

  He came with me to the door, but I didn’t look back. I heard it close behind me. I glanced up, half expecting that the day had clouded over, like some ominous foreshadowing in a Victorian novel. Instead it was still bright and lovely.

  I would miss such days when we moved away, I thought. The breeze off the bay had its own special quality. I would have to tell Jack that. It seemed as good a way as any to start the rest of my life.

  37

  It was almost dark by the time I got home, and the porch light was already on. I stood outside for a moment, schooling my face and heart into eagerness to return. Nothing less would be enough.

  I opened the door. “I’m home,” I called.

  “In here,” Jack answered. “In the kitchen.”

  Patrick was sitting at the kitchen table, holding the cat in his lap. Brooke was sitting next to him. “I’ve ordered Thai,” Jack said. “Brooke’s staying for dinner.”

  They all looked at me, gauging my reaction.

  I smiled. “That’s great,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I’m really glad you’re here, Brooke. I have some interesting news that could affect you, too. Remember our rival, Elson Larimer? Well …”

  AFTER A SUITABLE INTERVAL OF SILENCE, I nerved myself to call Alexei with the name of a New York attorney who could handle his adjustment of status. I left messages on his voice mail at work, which he didn’t return. I sent e-mails, which bounced back. His cell phone was off. On the fifth try, my call to SLAC was routed to the central switchboard.

  “I’m afraid Dr. Strela is no longer with us,” the receptionist said.

  I gripped the receiver. “Do you know where he can be reached?” I asked. “Has he gone to Cooper Livingston?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t have that information,” she said. “He’s no longer in our database. I hope,” she added, sounding a little more human, “that it was nothing important?”

  How could I answer that? “No,” I said. “I suppose not.”

  I tried the cell phone, and I even tried Cooper Livingston, but to no avail. He’d disappeared.

  I was apprehensive, but there was little I could do without risk. He was a grown man and, as I had made perfectly clear, nothing to do with me. I would have to wait till he called me.

  AT THE END OF THE WEEK, I was sitting in my office staring at the paperwork for the handful of H-1s that constituted the remaining legal work of Grady & Bartlett. After I finished them, there was nothing standing in the way of moving back to Southern California to open the La Jolla office of Elson Larimer. I would have to find someplace to live until we found a condo or a house we could afford on the proceeds of the sale of the house in Los Altos. We wouldn’t move permanently until after the wedding. Jack had requested that, and naturally I’d agreed.

  “You’re going where?” Kay asked in horrified accents when I told her the news. She made it sound as if we were proposing to move to Greater Mogadishu. “What are you planning to do, set up shop over a tanning parlor?”

  “No, a surf store,” I told her.

  “You’ll have to get a face-lift,” she said, immune to sarcasm. “Everyone gets them down there. They have to, because they get so wrinkled from the tanning.”

  “I’m a card-carrying member of the cosmetic underclass,” I protested. “And I’m not giving up my
Birkenstocks either.”

  She snorted. “You never wore Birkenstocks a day in your life.”

  “My symbolic Birkenstocks, then. Really, Kay, you sound ridiculous. It’s a lovely place. They have bookstores and opera and theater and all the things we have here. And so far they don’t have a dot-com hangover. That’s one thing I won’t be missing.”

  “So … um, is Jack okay with this?” she asked.

  “I’d say he’s moderately enthusiastic,” I replied. “It’s a big change for him.”

  “I’ll say. He’ll never wear anything but shorts again.”

  “Kay—”

  “And will you be joining the Southern California branch of the Anne Boleyn Society if I can find you one?” she asked lightly.

  I smiled into the phone. “Probably. Jack and I still have some things to work out. It’s not going to be easy. But I really think this is going to be good for all of us.”

  “Not for me,” she said.

  “Well,” I began.

  She picked up on my tone. “You’ll be selling the house, then?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “And the listing—”

  “Yes?” she asked breathlessly.

  “—is yours,” I said.

  “You’re a peach, Lynn,” she said. “Or should I make that an orange?”

  MY CONCENTRATION WAS INTERRUPTED WHEN, like something out of a B movie, a shadow fell across my desk. I looked up, startled.

  “Sorry if I frightened you,” Dmitri said. He stood in front of my desk, arms folded, in a way that made me remember nervously that I was alone. “The door was open.”

  “Where is Alexei?” I asked him, getting straight to the point.

  “I think you know where he is,” he said.

  I said nothing.

  He sighed and consulted his watch. “I would imagine,” he said carefully, “that at this very moment he is preparing for bed in Moscow. May I sit?”

  I made a gesture indicating an invitation somewhere between Be my guest and How can I stop you? He sat.

  “I’m not the enemy, you know,” he said.

  He could have fooled me. “Oh, really? What are you, then?”

  “I am a patriot,” he said. “I am also Alexei’s friend.”

  “How can you say that? He didn’t want to go back. You know he didn’t.”

  “I know he was torn. But you must accept that no one forced him. It was his choice. Nothing anyone else said or did could make him do what he didn’t want to do.”

  “I have only your word for that,” I said. I didn’t want to think what my own part in Alexei’s decision might have been.

  “You have a lot more than that,” Dmitri said. “You know his character.”

  “Your government pressured him,” I protested.

  He shrugged.

  “You know how he felt before, that the situation was hopeless?”

  “I know about his breakdown,” he said.

  “What will he do, feeling that way?” I asked.

  “The best he can,” he said, “as we all have to. Besides—and I tell you this as Alexei’s friend—the feelings of one person are nothing next to the magnitude of the need for his services.”

  “Even if it destroys his life?” I demanded.

  “Yes,” he said, “even then. But it won’t. Times are better now, and Alexei is brilliant. But I’m sure you know that already.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I know that.”

  “Cheer up,” he said. “Alexei’s taking a very important position. He will have a great deal of honor, and he has friends and family in Russia. He even has a wife, as you probably know. Here he was alone.”

  Not alone, I thought. But I remembered the half-packed boxes and the photo albums, and I knew he was right. I’d probably always known, down deep, that Alexei would go back, as he had known before I did that I’d stay with Jack.

  He gave me a shrewd look. “You have your friends and your own family, don’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “I imagine you are also the sort of person to honor your commitments, so I think, in the end, you will understand what Alexei has done.”

  “I’ll try,” I said. It was all I could think of.

  He took out his wallet. “Alexei asked me to give you this,” he said. He handed me a check for the remainder of my bill. I took it and folded it and put it in the drawer.

  “And this,” he said, passing me one of my own cards—Grady & Bartlett, on which someone had circled my name in pen. “He said you once gave this to a friend of his. You’d know which one.”

  I smiled, my eyes swimming a little, remembering David Peh’s encounter with Repo Man on the night of Jack’s party. “I know which one,” I said. I turned the card over. On the back Alexei—or someone—had written a Web address. “Thank you,” I said. “What will you do now?” I asked him.

  “Go home,” he said, with an answering smile. “Eventually.”

  WHEN HE HAD GONE, I turned on the computer and typed in the address. After a moment, the screen filled with tiny print. I scanned the page for text among the formulas and read:

  Particles that have interacted at some point retain a type of connection and can be entangled with each other in pairs in a process called correlation. No matter how great the distance between the correlated particles, they will remain entangled as long as they are isolated.

  It was a definition of quantum entanglement.

  38

  Meredith’s shower was catered by a trendy restaurant whose cuisine was described as “haute vegan.” Ever since the success of Roxanne’s demonstrated a demand for raw food, an increasing number of caterers offered uncooked organic fruits, nuts, and vegetables. Fortunately, the “nothing heated to more than 118 degrees” rule meant that wine was technically raw and therefore permissible. Meredith wouldn’t drink it because “Alcohol kills your brain cells,” but the rest of us were grateful.

  We sat on the patio with plates on our laps, sampling celeriac puree and almond-milk cheese and feeling virtuous and purified between sips of wine. Sunset magazine, the journal of western good living that originated on the Peninsula, had once done a feature on the hostess’s house, with its glassed-in patio room and tropical landscaping around the pool. Kay had told me that if Sunset features your house, it’s an automatic 10 percent added to the asking price. If you get into more exalted publications like Architectural Digest or House & Garden, the percentage goes up even more.

  The hostess was a friend of Jack and Janet’s from earlier days, someone I’d met in a casual way at one or two dinner parties when we were first married. She introduced me to the other guests—three teacher friends of Meredith’s from her school, Justin’s sister and mother, a cousin of Janet’s, and a number of middle-aged women who were clearly there because of their relationship to the parents of the bride or groom. There was no one who looked or sounded Italian, so Valerio’s faction was patently under-represented. I felt doubly virtuous and took another sip of wine.

  Janet and I nodded graciously to each other across the room. I assumed that would be it, since she was a costar of this production and mine was just a cameo role, so I was surprised when she came and sat down next to me, shoving her chair into the fronds of a gigantic tree fern.

  “I’ll move over,” I said, and I did.

  “Thank you for coming,” she said.

  I considered thanking her for approving my invitation, but I assumed that was understood, so I settled for, “I wouldn’t have missed it.”

  She leaned forward conspiratorially and said, “What can you tell me about this girl Patrick is seeing?”

  “Brooke?”

  She nodded.

  I tried not to roll my eyes or in any way indicate that Brooke wouldn’t be perfect daughter-in-law material, although I couldn’t imagine what she and Janet would make of each other if it ever came to that. The thought made me smile. “She’s very … cheerful,” I said carefully. “Very competent. Full of plans,” I added. />
  “Not like Patrick,” Janet observed.

  I was not touching that one. I went on smiling, as if I didn’t hear.

  Janet sighed. “I suppose she might be good for him. He certainly seems crazy about her. I hope I’ll get to meet her before the wedding.”

  “I’m sure you will,” I said, giving way to a less-than-noble enjoyment of the fact that there was something I knew about that Janet didn’t.

  We both looked at Meredith, who appeared to be trying to explain the green-papaya salad to her future mother-in-law. Justin’s mother, up from L.A., looked like Edith Bunker might have if she’d gotten an updated hairdo and wore pants. She seemed very proud of Justin and couldn’t help touching his muscled arm or shoulder at frequent intervals. Justin’s sister was overweight and peevish-looking. Of course I didn’t share any of these observations, but Janet was not so reticent.

  “Merry’s going to have trouble with that woman.” she said sotto voce. “She’s already making problems about the guest list for the wedding. I have a feeling this is only the beginning.”

  I watched Justin’s mother pick at her salad with undisguised horror. “Thanksgiving should be interesting,” I murmured.

  Janet looked at me and then laughed. “Thanksgiving is the ultimate test of any relationship. If you can survive each other’s families, you can survive anything.”

  I was tempted to respond to that one, too, but I gave it a pass and shrugged.

  “Valerio and I are getting a divorce,” she said.

  I sat up straighter. “I’m so sorry,” I said. I meant it, for a number of reasons.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “I’ve been alone before.” She looked at me. “It’s probably just as well you and Jack are moving away,” she said.

  “Yes,” I said candidly.

  She sighed and looked back across the patio at Meredith and her future relations. “You never really know what you’re getting into, do you?”

  Before I could answer, the photographer came up, attracted by our conversational pose. “Can I get the mothers?” he asked.

  I started to move out of the way, until I realized he was referring to me. I sneaked a look at Janet, who looked startled but amused.