The Good Wife

by Stewart O'Nan

  They break out of the woods and onto a long flat between green fields. The bus is up ahead, just turning onto Whitmarsh. They pull into line behind it, waiting as it picks up.

  “Mom,” he finally says.

  “Yeah,” she answers.

  “Does Mrs. Parrish know Daddy’s in jail?”

  Patty wants to be able to say no, but it’s a matter of public record—and memory, the ability to reach back five years and match their last name to the trial. A month ago, when she got his room assignment, she decided not to have a talk with Mrs. Parrish, thinking it might prejudice her. Now she thinks she was being wishful. Five years is nothing. There have to be thirty teachers there; it only takes one to infect the rest.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “She might. Why?”

  It’s unfair, turning the question back on him, and when she glances over, he just shrugs and mumbles “I don’t know” like he doesn’t care.

  At daycare he made the mistake of telling the other kids—to impress them, maybe.

  “Listen,” she says. “You tell Mrs. Parrish if anyone says anything. And you tell me as soon as it happens. You hear me?”

  He nods, hunching like he’s in trouble. This is exactly what she didn’t want to remind him of.

  The bus pulls out and they follow it down the broad curves to town, caught in its snaking tail. Patty wants to give him a pep talk, tell him he’ll see, this year’s going to be different, that it’s a whole new bunch of kids. She wants to tell him not to be afraid, but thinks that might frighten him even more.

  “I understand that you’re nervous,” she says, watching the brake lights in front of her. “What you have to remember is that everyone’s nervous. It’s the first day for everyone.”

  “I know,” he says. She wants to say he’ll do fine but doesn’t push her luck, and anyway, they’re almost there, the bus making a wide right onto Depot Street, the same way her old bus used to come.

  The school’s only a few blocks. They’re not allowed up the turnaround with the buses; there’s a side lot where parents wait in line to drop off. As they inch up, she sees he’s concentrating like he’s getting ready to jump out of a plane.

  “You’ve got your lunch,” she says, like they’re going over a checklist, and then it’s their turn. She pulls up to the marked spot and puts it in neutral. “Kiss,” she says, and leans across to squeeze him. “I love you,” she says, and then, as he’s navigating the door, can’t help adding, “Have fun,” just like her mother.

  She waves as he shoves the door closed with both hands. She should be relieved that he’s going at all—it’s what she’s battled for all morning. She watches him walk away until he’s gone, absorbed in the stream of kids headed for the doors. There’s nothing more for her to do, and she has cars behind her. Driving away, she feels like she does every weekend, leaving Auburn. Tomorrow, she thinks, he’s taking the bus.

  MONKEY WARD

  THAT FALL THE SOUTHERN TIER HAS A LONG, BRILLIANT INDIAN summer. The trees keep their leaves well into November, when the rains come, making cleanup a nightmare. Brian’s gone to SUNY-Binghamton and they’re shorthanded. Every night when she gets home her back aches from shouldering a racketing leafblower all day. In bed, her hands cramp, keeping her awake.

  She has an application in at the Montgomery Ward in Sayre, where Eileen has a friend whose aunt is assistant manager. They always hire people on for the holidays, and if they like you, you can stay. She’ll be making less money, but at least she won’t be tired all the time.

  Her mother’s glad Patty’s finally come to her senses. “But, Montgomery Ward?”

  “It’s just for now,” Patty says.

  Her plan is to finish leaf season and give Russ notice, then take off the week before Thanksgiving. She holds off telling Tommy till the last minute because she knows he’ll try and talk her out of it, and then when she does, that’s exactly what happens.

  He doesn’t understand why she’d leave a good job where there’s someone looking out for her—and for less money? They end up arguing over the phone and then again when she visits. Finally, after she’s already handed in her notice, he apologizes, or tries to. “It’s your life,” he says. “You want to go work at Monkey Ward, that’s your choice.”

  “It’s not my life,” she says. “It’s just a job. You and Casey are my life.” She can’t explain to him that a new job in a new town will let her start fresh.

  Her last day, Russ has a sheet cake for her with pink icing that says GOOD LUCK. Patty makes a speech, saying she’ll miss everyone, but she won’t miss digging fire hydrants out of snowdrifts. She won’t miss shoveling up roadkill. The guys raise their sodas to her. And that’s it; after a rainy afternoon hanging around the garage, she empties her locker and punches out, thanks Russ one more time for making a place for her, and then she’s alone, on her way home with her last paycheck. It seems unreal, too easy. She doesn’t trust the feeling of lightness, of having money in her pocket and no place to go.

  The next week she sleeps in and drinks coffee in her bathrobe, watching specials about the hostages in Iran, nagged by the fact that she could be visiting Tommy. Her mother’s in and out, paying bills, running errands. Patty helps her do the Thanksgiving shopping, the two of them braving the chaos of the big Tops in Johnson City. In the crush of carts at the deli counter, she feels out of place, as if she should be at work. Wednesday they spend in the kitchen, like every year, the calm before the storm, but it’s different, knowing she starts Saturday, when everyone else is off. She’s tired and down, when there’s no reason to be. It’s just a mood, she thinks, like the gray weather outside.

  Thanksgiving is busy. Kyra’s grown up over the last year, and while Patty’s happy for her, the change makes her feel old. Her mother asks Eileen and Cy when she should expect another grandchild, and Eileen stuns everyone by saying, “Soon, we’re hoping.” Marshall’s been promoted to regional sales manager; Shannon’s doing her student teaching at Randy’s middle school.

  “Patty’s got a new job,” her mother offers.

  Patty has to defuse their congratulations, saying it’s just temporary.

  “Where?” Shannon asks.

  “Indoors,” Patty says for a laugh, but they wait and make her say it. The whole room pauses to process the two words.

  “That’s a switch,” Shannon says.

  “I think the winters were getting to her,” her mother explains, and it’s safe for everyone to agree with that.

  Later, when they’re doing dishes side by side, Shannon leans in and asks how Tommy’s doing, as if it’s a secret.

  “He’s all right,” Patty answers.

  “If there’s anything we can do,” Shannon says, “just let us know.”

  “Thank you,” Patty says, instead of asking where she was five years ago.

  In bed that night, Patty resents the assumption that she needs money. When’s the last time Shannon had a real job? Patty would love to have someone else pay for her to go to school, but she’s got other responsibilities.

  Friday when she visits Tommy there’s no crowd, and while processing is quicker, she feels singled out in the waiting room. She misses the noise and the little kids. Casey takes advantage of the emptiness, trying seat after seat until she tells him to stop. Instead of leftovers, she has Polaroids of yesterday for Tommy. He lingers over the turkey and candles, laughs at the shot of Cy and Marshall at opposite ends of the couch. “We watched the game here,” he says. “Pretty pitiful.”

  “Mom told everyone about my new job.”

  “What’d they say?”

  She has to be careful with Casey right there. “They’re glad I’m going to be inside. They’re not too sure about inside where.”

  He nods and then shrugs, like, what did she expect?

  “You know,” she says, “it would be really nice if just once someone would tell me I’m doing the right thing.”

  “Look, you’re doing great, you both are. I know how hard it must
be to keep things together out there, and you’re doing it.”

  “So why’d you give me a hard time about working at ‘Monkey Ward’? Did you think I was going to work on the truck for the rest of my life?”

  “No,” he says, and rolls his head like his neck’s stiff. Beside her, Casey’s pretending to be interested in the pictures.

  “Hey,” Patty says, and gets the attention of both of them, though she only wants Tommy’s. “I can do a lot of things myself, but I still need your help. You don’t have to pretend you’re thrilled with every decision I make, just tell me I’m doing all right.”

  “You’re doing all right,” he says.

  “Thank you. That’s all I wanted.”

  “So when do you have to be in?”

  Seven, but the drive over to Sayre takes half an hour, and she wants to look nice, so she needs to be up at five, five-thirty at the latest.

  “It’s going to be very different,” she says.

  “You’ll do great,” Tommy says, and later, as she’s leaving, wishes her good luck, but on the way home her mood changes like it always does, and she thinks she bullied him into it.

  She tries to get to bed early, making a turkey and cranberry sandwich to take tomorrow. She’s gotten used to staying up till midnight, and lies awake, afraid she won’t sleep, but soon she’s dozing, dreaming, and when she surfaces again the clock says it’s half past three. She manages to drop off again, only to be ambushed by the beep of the alarm. The sun isn’t up yet, and the house is cold. She gets dressed and spends time on her hair, worried that the blow-dryer might wake up Casey. It doesn’t, but her mother comes down in her robe to make coffee and see her off, talking about her plans to make soup, breaking Patty’s concentration so that only when she’s halfway to Sayre, flying along the deserted highway, the tall weeds frosted in the ditches, does she remember her sandwich.

  The store bookends a plaza with a giant Wegmans and little shops in between. She’s supposed to park around the side even though the lot’s empty, the carts locked away. She’s a good twenty minutes early and thinks she might be the first one in, but as she passes the front doors she sees people moving inside. Around the corner, a dozen cars are nosed in against the wall. She takes the first open spot, aware that the white Monte Carlo next to her might be her boss’s. She backs up so the truck is straight with the lines, as if that will magically make everything perfect.

  A tall guy with glasses lets her in, leaving the keys in the door for the next person. She’s supposed to meet Jill. Patty’s only talked to the aunt of Eileen’s friend over the phone, so she’s surprised to find that the young black-haired woman at the back of the store is wearing the right nametag.

  Jill takes her farther back, into a cinder-block storeroom where she outfits Patty with a sleeveless vest like the one she’s wearing, tan with a chocolate collar. She already has a nametag made up for her, except this one says TRAINEE.

  Newcomers start on the floor stocking and straightening, keeping the aisles clean and anything else the department managers or cashiers need. The first thing Patty has to learn is the layout of the store. Jill gives her a map and a cart piled with cast-off merchandise to go back on the shelves. “Come find me when you’re done,” she says, and walks away.

  As Patty works, she thinks how weird it is being in a store before it opens—almost fun, as if she’s trespassing. The muzak that usually comes from the ceiling is turned off; except for the steady clash of the cart as it rolls over the floor, it’s quiet as a library. The lighting is flat and weak, overhead fluorescents that leave dim patches in the air. Patty roams the aisles from Toys to Housewares on a reverse scavenger hunt, turning in circles, backtracking. She hurries as if she’s being timed, trying to memorize as she goes. It makes sense that Sporting Goods is beside Hardware, and Hardware next to Garden, but why is Health and Beauty after that? The hardest part is remembering what’s on special in the displays dotting the main aisles. She passes a column of Danish butter cookies three times before realizing they match the tin she’s got in her cart.

  By the time she gets to the bottom, it’s almost nine. A clump of customers loiters outside, ready to storm the doors. She tracks Jill down in Layaway and shows her the empty cart.

  “Great,” Jill says, busy with the guy behind the counter. “Grab yourself a flyer so you know where the specials are, then ask Helen in Stationery what she needs.”

  The customers are all lost, and while some of them are impatient, most are willing to let Patty lead, following her through the aisles like children. No one recognizes her. They thank her and wish her Merry Christmas, the old ladies calling her “dear.” People chatter at her, thinking out loud, asking her advice like she’s been there for years. When she runs a price check, she hustles, and the cashiers seem to appreciate it. Jill swings by to see how she’s doing and takes her to the break room where there’s free coffee and someone’s brought in a tray of homemade cookies. She gets thirty minutes for lunch, just enough to slip over to the Chinese takeout with some of the cashiers. This is nothing, they say, just wait. That last weekend before Christmas, it gets really hairy. Otherwise it’s pretty easy, they agree. It can get boring; you don’t want it too quiet. Patty can’t imagine that. The place is packed all afternoon. The cashiers keep her hopping, the speakers in the ceiling calling her name. By the end of the day she doesn’t need the map, but takes it home anyway.

  Sunday’s the same, except she’s with Janine in Pets. On a price check, she passes a wall of TVs in Electronics and misses having football on all day, but she likes watching the fish and listening to the parakeets, the squeaking wheels of the hamsters, and wonders if Casey might be interested in something like that for Christmas. It’s a calm department, a backwater tucked into a corner, and that week as she rotates through Music and Boys and Baby and Photo, she decides she likes Pets best.

  “If I can get you there, I’ll get you there,” Jill says. “No promises. Can you work tomorrow?”

  Friday’s her only day off, and she has no way of telling Tommy.

  “If you can’t, just say so.”

  “I’ve got an appointment in the morning,” Patty says. “I can come in after lunch.”

  “And work till close?”

  “Sure,” Patty says.

  The next morning she cuts her visit with Tommy short and drives straight from Auburn to work in a freezing rain. He said he understood, but all the way down she feels bad. When the truck slips, she thinks she doesn’t want to die with things this way between them. She gets in late and has a horrible day in Garden, Molly the department manager talking her ear off about soil and fertilizers and the right-size pot. Friday’s payday, but Patty didn’t start till last Saturday, so she doesn’t get an envelope like everyone else. When she finally does, the next week, she’s shocked at how small it is for all the hours she’s putting in.

  She doesn’t complain. The key is making it through the first ninety days and moving up to cashier. Like the other girls said, this is the hardest part. She needs to see this as an investment, a step up to something better. The constant loop of Christmas music is driving her crazy, and the fake smile she has to wear even when she’s tired, but she’s saving money on presents with her employee discount, and now that the weather’s turned, she’s glad she’s not out on the truck. It’s just a job, she thinks. She doesn’t have to love it.

  ADDITIONAL COMMENTS

  THEY DON’T GIVE GRADES IN KINDERGARTEN, JUST CHECK MARKS for behavior. Casey’s are all good or outstanding (better than Patty ever got, her mother notes). Beneath the filled-in grid, Mrs. Parrish has written: Conscientious student. Could talk more. Patty congratulates him, and they celebrate with his favorite dinner, fish sticks and french fries, but when she goes to open house and meets with his teacher, it’s the one negative she zeroes in on.

  “It’s nothing to worry about,” Mrs. Parrish says. “Some kids are naturally shy. Sometimes it has to do with the jump from preschool to kindergarten and takes ca
re of itself after the first term. I just thought I should let you know.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Otherwise he’s a real pleasure to have in class. He’s one of our best readers.”

  “He’s getting along with everyone?” Patty asks.

  “I’d say so. He’s in a nice group of boys.”

  Patty wants further proof, but that’s all the time they have. When she gets home, she tells Casey the good things Mrs. Parrish said and suggests it wouldn’t hurt to speak up more, but doesn’t push it. He’s always been quiet; even when he was a baby, he barely cried.

  She should be happy he’s doing so well at his new school, but now she’s sensitive about how little he actually says. He’s polite, answering a direct question with a word or two, and occasionally he’ll ask her something simple, like what’s for dinner, but they go days without having a real conversation. He doesn’t tell jokes or stories for attention, and during their Wednesday night phone call she has to prompt him to speak with Tommy. Even when he’s watching cartoons, he doesn’t laugh out loud.

  “You were quiet,” her mother reminds her.

  Not like this, Patty thinks, but agrees with her. It’s easier, and since she’s never around now, there’s nothing she can do about it. She feels bad for working so much, missing weekends with him. He hasn’t seen Tommy since she started. It’s just till the Christmas rush is over; by then she should be back on some kind of normal schedule.

  In the meantime, she pays Casey special attention, playing Chutes and Ladders with him, watching TV under the comforter. Part of it, she’s convinced, is that he’s an only child. He spends too much time alone. She tries not to be obvious, but she seizes every opportunity to be with him. At the dinner table, she asks him what was the best thing that happened to him today. And the worst? At bedtime she reads to him, and has him read to her. When they’re done, she runs through their plans for tomorrow, messing up on purpose to coax a reaction out of him.

  “He’s so serious,” she tells her mother, the two of them going over their Christmas lists, ignoring the claymation special on TV