The Good Wife

by Stewart O'Nan

  He won’t get his first check until the end of the month, and has to ask her for pocket money, something neither of them is used to. Her mother warned Patty that he might have a problem with her making so much more than him. He hasn’t said anything, but every morning she’s aware of how they must look to someone driving beside them—her in a business suit, him in a workshirt and jeans. She tries to tell herself it doesn’t matter, just as she doesn’t dwell on the fact that he’s doing a job she was done with twenty years ago.

  What surprises her most these first weeks is how quiet he is, not like the Tommy who used to sing along with the radio or holler from the other room for the fun of it. It’s unfair comparing the two, but it worries her. She finds herself observing him, looking for clues. When she sees him watching the Bills without even commenting on a long touchdown run, she wonders if the changes are permanent. She sits down beside him and folds laundry on the coffee table, talking back to the TV, and while he finally joins in, he’s not as excited as he should be, as if the game doesn’t matter.

  He’s still not good with crowds. Their Christmas shopping at the mall lasts about five minutes. In the car he says he’s sorry, but doesn’t offer to try again. Patty understands; he needs to build up to it.

  He likes to be outside. He’ll go and smoke on the back porch for the view even though it’s freezing. They take walks in the woods, following the Indian trails past Casey’s old lean-to, fallen now, a sopping magazine trapped under the leaves and debris. It’s easier talking to him here, away from the world. He says he feels weird. He thinks everybody can tell that he’s been in prison just from looking at him. He wonders if it would be better if they moved.

  He looks unsure when Patty laughs, as if he’s said something stupid.

  “No,” she says. “It’s just that 1 used to think the same thing.”

  “But you never did.”

  “I wouldn’t have had the help I needed somewhere else.”

  He still thinks they should have their own place, but he’s willing to wait. Maybe in the spring, when things are more settled. Right now he needs to get his bearings.

  The best way to do that, Patty thinks, is to get out more, go to the grocery store, go ice skating. He’s not going to catch up to the twenty-first century by setting up their old stereo and playing records all weekend like a teenager. At the same time, she can’t be angry with him. She needs to be patient. She thinks it’s lucky she has practice.

  The one place they’re making up for lost time is in the bedroom. He expects sex every night, and even when she’s not in the mood she can’t deny him. It’s not the romance she dreamed of when he was inside, not the long-awaited celebrations of their FRPs, but how could it be?

  He’s with her now almost constantly. They’re only separated at work, and even then they’re in the same building. At first she couldn’t let him out of her sight; now she’s glad to have a few hours’ privacy. She’s grown so used to being alone, to following her own schedule and having her own space, that at times she feels cramped. It’s just the power of habit; she really wants him here.

  He’s doing okay, according to his parole officer. He reports once a week, a convenient opportunity to practice some highway driving. On the way home is the only time she sees him seriously angry, calling the guy a prick. “I’m fifty-seven and I’m cleaning up old people’s diarrhea, and he’s lecturing me about reality? Let’s see him walk into Auburn for five minutes and see how long he lasts.”

  “I didn’t know you hated your job so much,” she says.

  “I’m just saying the guy doesn’t have to be an asshole. It’s bad enough I have to listen to his regular shit.”

  “You know, I did that job for six years.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I don’t hate the job. The whole thing just gets to me.”

  He means parole, but obviously he doesn’t love the job either. Maybe it was a mistake thinking they could work at the same place. Maybe her mother’s right. Patty consoles herself with the idea that it was only supposed to be temporary. She doesn’t want him emptying bedpans and mopping hallways any more than he does, but he has to start somewhere.

  He’s just frustrated, he says. Everything’s harder than he thought it would be.

  It’s exactly what the parole officer told her that first home visit, but she can’t say that. She needs to be positive, and tells him what she tells herself. Be patient. Things will get better.

  And then, with two weeks till Christmas, he gets sick. There’s been a flu going around, and he spends half the night in the bathroom. Because he’s on probation, he doesn’t have any sick days yet, and wants to go in so he won’t get docked. He can’t—not until his fever’s gone. Patty almost takes the day off to take care of him. She explains the situation to Holly, who says it’s no problem.

  “How’s he getting along?” Patty asks.

  “All right,” Holly says. “Did he tell you about Lainie?”

  “No.”

  “I guess they got into it over something she asked him to do. You know how she can be when she’s in a hurry. Otherwise he’s been fine.”

  When Patty asks Tommy his side of it, he says he doesn’t have to take Lainie’s shit. She’s not his boss.

  “She’s part of the nursing staff,” Patty says.

  “She’s a fucking bitch.”

  “Maybe she is, but you’re going to have to learn how to work with her.”

  “I have,” he says. “I stay the hell away from her.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Patty asks.

  “I didn’t want you to get mad.”

  “You didn’t think I’d find out?”

  “I didn’t think it was such a big deal, but obviously it is—like it’s my fault she’s a bitch. It’s all right for her to talk to me like I’m a piece of shit, but when I walk away from it, I’m the bad guy. How does that work, huh? I didn’t even say anything. I used my conflict resolution, and I’m the one who gets in trouble.”

  She doesn’t want to argue with him—he already feels like no one’s on his side. And he’s sick, he’s miserable. Instead of going downstairs she stays with him, sitting by his bedside and watching a rerun of The Simpsons.

  He’s out for three days. She notices that she doesn’t worry about him as much, knowing he’s at home.

  The next week, she gets it, and he has to drive in by himself. It reminds her of when Casey first got his license. She just has to trust that he’ll be all right. He should be coming home around five-thirty. One night he’s late, pulling in a few minutes after six. She’s ready to smell his breath and ask him where he’s been when she sees the bag he’s trying to hide—from Conti Jewelers, her Christmas present.

  She thinks things are back to normal when she returns to work. He helps put up the big tree in the lobby. It’s the busy week before Christmas, parties and lots of visitors. Patty’s asked Holly to keep an eye on him and let her know if he has any problems. She doesn’t expect any, since Lainie’s working swing shift through New Year’s—a scheduling move Patty has nothing to do with.

  Thursday morning before coffee break, Holly calls and asks if she’s seen Tommy. He was supposed to be helping Janice turn over a vacancy on three when he took off. They have people looking in the locker room downstairs and the men’s toilets on each floor. Holly thought he might be headed for Patty’s office.

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Holly says. “Janice said he just left.”

  “Shit,” Patty says when she gets off the phone. She paces to the window, trying to think, and looks down at the picnic tables by the river, the bare trees on the far bank, the dark hints of trails. He’ll be outside, she realizes, and grabs her jacket.

  Her first guess is correct. He’s at the car—locked—standing there because he doesn’t have his keys. She has to cross a long open stretch to reach him, walking hard in her pumps.

  “What are you doing?” she asks him, aware of the whole nursing home
at her back.

  “I quit,” he says.

  “What?”

  “I can’t work here. I’m sorry, Pats, I can’t. It’s too depressing.”

  She’s been at Riverview so long that she hadn’t thought of that at all. He says the patients remind him of lifers, the way their rooms are set up like cells. He hates emptying their dressers and boxing their things. He hates the way the nurses leave them in their wheelchairs in the hallways.

  “I don’t see how you do it,” he says.

  “You can’t quit,” she says. “You’re not allowed to.”

  “I can get fired.”

  He’s serious, and she wonders if this is what was behind the Lainie thing, if she told him to do something he couldn’t stomach.

  She wants to reason with him, here in front of everyone. Why is he throwing this chance away? Doesn’t he know how hard it is to find a job in this economy? Doesn’t he care how much trouble she went to, arranging this for him?

  Unlike her twenty years ago, he thinks he has a choice.

  “Fine,” she says, “you’re fired,” and hands him her keys.

  THE GIVING SEASON

  SUNDAY MORNING PATTY PUTTERS IN THE KITCHEN IN HER APRON and sweatpants and slippers, her hair tucked under a scarf. She’s finished with her shopping and is dedicating the whole day to cookies. So far her plan’s working perfectly. Her mother took off early for church; Tommy and Casey are outside, stringing lights. The sticks of butter she left out last night are just the right softness. She has the oven warming and the bags of flour and sugar ranked on the counter, the carton of eggs, the bowls of sprinkles. It’s so quiet that she feels funny talking herself through her recipes, as if someone’s listening.

  Rinsing her hands at the sink, she looks out over the backyard, bare and brown. The sky’s white, solid clouds. They’re predicting a big storm for Christmas, just like in Rudolph—a nightmare for scheduling shifts, but still, Patty’s excited. It’s been an early winter, cold, snow cover all month until last Friday, when the temperature shot up to fifty, melting everything. After weeks of pretty, drifted fields, the world seems drab.

  While the first sheet of sand tarts is baking, she slips into the gray living room and secretly peeks through the window at Tommy and Casey, untangling the green strings on the porch. Traditionally it’s been Casey’s job, saved for him ever since she had her back problems. Tommy doesn’t see why they had to wait, he can climb a ladder just fine, but Patty wants Casey to be a part of this Christmas, not just a visitor. It takes two people anyway, one to go up the ladder, another to hold it.

  The timer dings, reeling her in. She trades baking sheets, swapping new rows of raw diamonds for the done ones, then resetting the timer. Her mother’s stove is old and doesn’t keep the heat well. She has to overshoot with the dial and rely on a thermometer hooked to the rack. Since she’s baking all day, eventually the stove will catch up, so she has to keep an eye on it.

  She lays a sheet of waxed paper under the cooling rack and sprinkles the first batch of sand tarts with glassy cinnamon crystals, recycling the ones that fall through. Over the years, she’s gathered a fair-sized collection of Christmas cookie tins in addition to her mother’s. Some are ugly, or rusted along the seams, but she never gets rid of any. She lines a small one with waxed paper and piles the sand tarts in. By the end of the day, all the tins will be filled. She’ll have enough to take a big assorted tin to work tomorrow and another for her mother to take to church Christmas Eve. It’s just the beginning, but with each sheet that comes out of the oven, she feels like she’s getting something done.

  The front door opens. It’s Casey, letting in a chill. Maybe it’s her imagination, but he seems thinner this year, fitter. He says he’s been walking a lot—doctor’s orders. Now he’s sweating in his jacket, his bangs matted.

  “How’s it going?” she asks. “Is your father helping you?”

  “Oh yeah,” he says, a joke, and rumbles down the basement stairs. A minute later he comes up with an orange extension cord.

  He’s made it clear in their phone calls that he thinks she shouldn’t have let Tommy quit his job. Patty doesn’t expect Casey to understand. She’s told him flat out that she’s not his father’s keeper, and that her mother wasted a lot of good years trying to make her feel the same way.

  They all need to find a new way to be with each other. This Christmas is their first try, and she doesn’t know what to expect. She knows the temptation is to make up for all the Christmases they’ve missed, a kind of super holiday FRP. Though she hates to admit it, it would have been a hell of a lot easier if Tommy could have just waited one more week to quit.

  She does the snickerdoodles next, hoping the cream of tartar from last year is still good. She doesn’t even like them; they’re Eileen’s favorite. Patty will make a little tin just for her and take it by after work tomorrow.

  The door opens and shuts and Tommy comes in with his Bills hat on. They have to beat Green Bay today or they’re eliminated, and they’re playing at Lambeau.

  “Think you’ll be done by gametime?” she asks.

  “I’m hoping,” he says, and goes downstairs, returning with a pair of needlenose pliers.

  Patty lets the door close behind him before creeping into the living room.

  While Casey holds the string for him, Tommy uses the pliers to unscrew the base of a bulb that’s broken off in the socket. Tommy sets the jagged neck on the porch rail and waits for Casey to find the next one. Their mouths move, steam leaking out. Patty wishes she could hear what they’re saying. She watches them do two more that way before the timer calls her.

  Is it a good sign that Casey’s letting him take the lead, or is he just putting up with him, the way he’s always put up with things? He can be so distant, as if he still has that passive teenager hiding inside him. Considering how long they’ve been apart, she has to laugh at what she’s hoping for: she doesn’t expect them to suddenly become close, just to love each other.

  She mixes the dough for the pinwheels and splits it between two bowls, stirring melted chocolate into one, then refrigerating them so they’ll roll without bleeding. She checks the list she put together at work. She still has lemon squares to make (Shannon’s specialty, if she were here), and candy cane cookies, and gingerbread snowmen. There are no bourbon or rum balls this year, and she’s only making a small batch of the date-nut bars, since no one eats them but her mother. And though there are no children to decorate them, she’ll make some plain bells and Christmas trees and whip up four bowls of powdered sugar icing using the food coloring that hasn’t been touched since Easter and gob it on thick.

  The timer goes off, and the clock says it’s past noon, less than an hour till gametime. She goes out to check on their progress.

  This time she doesn’t hide, but they don’t notice. They’re sitting on the top stair with their backs to her. On the porch floor behind them, as if cast off, lies a string that’s had all its bulbs plucked out.

  They both look back when she opens the storm door. Between them they’ve got one of the other strings hooked to the extension cord. It should be on, but it’s not, and they’re going through the bulbs, replacing them one at a time from a box of extras.

  “Case says we’ve had these for a while,” Tommy says. “How long would you say?”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “A long time.”

  “I think it might be time for some new ones.”

  “They didn’t just go bad,” Patty reasons, because she’s attached to them (and because, through the years, she’s become cheap). They’re old, the outdoor-only kind, the bulbs bigger than the ones on the tree. Originally she had six strings and did the whole porch and the bushes and the dogwood. They used to blink.

  “I had problems with them last year,” Casey says.

  “Those two are okay,” Tommy says, “and I’m hoping we’ll get this one going, but that one’s shot.”

  “Three strings aren’t enough to cover the front,�
�� Casey points out.

  How can Patty argue when they’re united against her? It’s almost worth it to send them off to Wal-Mart. Casey says he has money, which is ridiculous. Tommy tells him he can drive. Patty doesn’t remind him that the game’s starting, just watches them off in the rental car and goes back inside. The last batch of snicker-doodles is almost done.

  As she spreads the gooey filling of the lemon squares over the dough, she times the drive to Vestal. Twenty minutes there, fifteen in the store, then twenty back. Nearly an hour. It’s probably the longest they’ve ever been alone together. Greedily, she wants to be there, hidden in the backseat, listening. She wants to see what the greeter at Wal-Mart sees coming through the doors—two big guys with stooped shoulders, obviously father and son.

  For now, the house is hers, sweet with the smell of vanilla. The tins are filling. She’s made a decent dent in the list, and the Bills will be on soon. It’s supposed to snow for Christmas. In the quiet, she finds herself whistling “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” over and over, happy, as if she’s won something.

  OPENING DAY

  THIS TIME, WHEN THE TROOPS INVADE IRAQ, THE WEEK OF CASEY’S birthday, Patty has someone to complain to about the yellow ribbons. She flips the channel whenever she sees a story coming up about soldiers who’ve spent two weeks as POWs being called heroes. Tommy says it’s natural and that it doesn’t bother him.

  He’s working at Best Buy, driving a forklift, thanks to the job bank at the parole office. He’s got a used Ford pickup, just like before, making the monthly payments to build his credit. With two checks coming in, they’ve been able to put some money away. He hasn’t bugged her about a house, but it’s the season. Once the weather turns, the realty signs will pop up like dandelions.

  Winter lingers into April. It’s still cold Opening Day when they go out with Eileen and Cy. Though she drives over Owego Creek twice daily, it’s been years since Patty’s been down to the water, probably not since their father took them fishing. The flats below the Talcott Street bridge are packed, a gauntlet of rods. Cy has a pair of waders for her, but she begs off, sticking to the rocks like Eileen. Cy and Tommy slosh across and claim a sandbar, giving each other room to cast. Eileen has to show Patty what to do. When the fire siren sounds to officially start the season, she sends her line out over the water in a long arc that makes Tommy smile.