She doesn’t expect to catch anything, it’s more of a ceremony. The whole town’s out, and after the claustrophobia of watching the war, it feels good to be doing something normal. Tommy and Cy are a good match, like her and Eileen.
They’re talking about her mother going down to visit Shannon for Easter when Patty’s line snags on something. The current’s taken it toward shore where there’s a snarl of black branches among the rocks. She tugs—it’s stuck. She moves a few steps downstream and tips her rod back, hoping to clear it, and with a high-pitched whizzing, line begins stripping off her reel.
Her first reaction is to grab the handle to keep it from spinning, but she can’t stop it cleanly.
“I’ve got something!” she calls.
“Let him take the line if he wants,” Eileen says.
“How do I do that?”
“Just don’t let go.”
She wants Eileen to do it, but people are watching—Tommy and Cy laughing and hollering encouragement.
Eileen has her play the fish, reeling him in and then letting him run, like that might tire him. Somehow it does. Patty can see the sleek torpedo shape of him drifting in the shallows, powerless, as Eileen wades in with the net. They’ve gathered a crowd of little kids and their parents.
“Brown trout,” one of the men says before Eileen even lifts it out, curved in the web of the net.
“Wow,” a kid says.
“Oh, he’s pretty,” an older woman says. He’s as long as Eileen’s forearm, with muddy speckles and a yellow belly. His gills open and close.
“Want to keep him?” Eileen asks.
“No,” Patty says, “let’s let him go.” But before she does, she holds him up so Tommy and Cy can admire him.
They stay until Tommy gets his limit of five. Cy and Eileen take four each. Patty had just the one, but they all agree, hers was the prize.
IN THE DARK
IT’S A HUMID NIGHT IN JULY. THE WAR’S OVER. THE BRIDGE IS FINISHED. It’s been a good day: work, an easy commute, then dinner, TV. Boring, normal life—exactly what she wanted for so long. They’ve switched off the news and gone to bed at the regular time. They’re both too tired to read so they turn the light out and have a last sip of water before settling in.
They’ve gotten past having to make love every night and gone back to their natural haphazard schedule. He starts out facing her, then rolls over. She rolls with him, spooned and then spooning, her knees tucked behind his, an arm flung over him so they can hold hands, and soon he’s gone, his breathing raspy and jagged. He sleeps so easily.
She’s awake, for no reason she can think of. The bed’s too hot, or maybe it’s the full moon, tracing the crosspiece of the window over the curtains, as if she’s left the spotlight on out back. In the woods, the peepers are calling. It reminds her of Auburn, the canal just beyond the wall. For years, lying here, she used to imagine herself there with Tommy, in the old trailers. She’d fly to him through the night like a witch, over the dark lakes and forests, the sleeping towns. Now all she has to do is reach for him.
She knows from experience that anything can happen, but he’s been so good. Even her mother’s impressed. Casey will take longer, and honestly, he may never understand.
Tommy shifts, and she rolls with him, takes his warm hand in hers and presses it to her chest. He’s asleep, she’s awake, yet they’re together here, and she dares to believe the long pause that’s kept them from their real life is finally behind them. It’s over. He’s home. They made it.
Praise for The Good Wife
“A deceptively simple style, confessional almost. Indeed, the tone here is so personal, so intimate, we feel like voyeurs, as if we’re reading someone’s diary … . It is in these quotidian moments that the novel reaches its lyrical height.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“O’Nan displays his astonishing ability to get under his diverse characters’ skin and thereby draw us deeply into their lives.”
—Chicago Sun-Times
“[O’Nan] depicts Patty’s working class—milieu with rare and cleareyed compassion.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“Wholly engrossing and flawlessly crafted … Masterful.”
—Baltimore Sun
“Grabs the reader immediately and refuses to let go … The Good Wife is a celebration of the bravery it takes to get from day to day to day when there’s little to go on but hope.”
—The Hartford Courant
“Forceful, oddly moving … O’Nan has completely captured Patty and her dogged determination to endure in this sad but strangely hopeful story.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“O’Nan shows singular restraint; there is no preaching in The Good Wife. Instead, there is just one woman’s story, quietly told … . Perfect.”
—The Denver Post
“O’Nan has spun a taut, deeply affecting novel … . He has a pitchperfect ear for dialogue, and especially for interior conversations. Indeed, the novel owes much of its power to the author’s uncanny ability to inhabit Patty’s mind.”
—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“O’Nan is a writer worthy of serious attention.”
—Chicago Tribune
“[An] engrossing and heartbreaking novel … O’Nan has been named one of the best young American novelists by Granta, and it’s evident here why.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“The overriding reaction O’nan evokes for his heroine is awed sympathy. The Good Wife is a quietly devastating, thought-provoking examination of love and loyalty that can’t be locked away.”
—Contra Costa Times
“Have you grown tired lately of high-concept novels, full of flash and action but signifying nothing so much as our modern conceits? A wonderful antidote can be found in The Good Wife, a richly observed, eloquently executed working-class pastoral on an underappreciated human quality: endurance.”
—The News-Press (Fort Myers, Florida)
“[O’Nan’s] touch is deft with his plotline, his characters subtle and lifelike.”
—The Buffalo News
ALSO BY STEWART O’NAN
NOVELS
THE NIGHT COUNTRY
WISH YOU WERE HERE
EVERYDAY PEOPLE
A PRAYER FOR THE DYING
A WORLD AWAY
THE SPEED QUEEN
THE NAMES OF THE DEAD
SNOW ANGELS
STORIES
IN THE WALLED CITY
NONFICTION
THE CIRCUS FIRE
FAITHFUL, with Stephen King
AS EDITOR
THE VIETNAM READER
ON WRITERS AND WRITING, by John Gardner
Stewart O’Nan’s novels include Snow Angels, The Night Country, and A Prayer for the Dying. He is also the author of the nonfiction books The Circus Fire and, with Stephen King, the bestselling Faithful. Granta named him one of the Twenty Best Young American Novelists. He lives in Connecticut.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author would like to extend his heartfelt thanks to:
Alison Coleman and Nancy Lee Warner, for helping me understand what families on the outside deal with day after day, year after year.
Lynn Anderson at Auburn Correctional Facility, for her insight into the Family Reunion Program there.
Susan Eaton, Gillian Harris, William E. “Easy” Waters of the Osborne Association, Ed Muller, Heidi Mercado at New York Inmate Families, and Ray Hill at KPFT, for giving me privileged glimpses behind closed doors and pointing me in the right direction.
Asha Bandele, Ted Conover, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, Ken McClane and Robert O’Connor for their writings about life inside and outside of the New York State Department of Corrections, and, closer to home, John Edgar Wideman for Brothers and Keepers.
Tompkins County judge Jack Sherman, for his thorough laying out of the legal process.
Paul Cody and Pete Wetherbee, not only for donating their sharp
eyes as readers but for sharing their experiences teaching inside Auburn.
David Gernert, Lamar Herrin, Trudy O’Nan and Luis Urrea, for their faith and their smart and honest judgments.
Stephen and Owen King, for listening and providing such wise counsel.
And finally, Jonathan Galassi and Lorin Stein, for their concern, their editorial skills and their patience.
THE GOOD WIFE. Copyright © 2005 by Stewart O’Nan. All rights reserved. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
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First published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Designed by Gretchen Achilles
eISBN 9781429976923
First eBook Edition : March 2011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
O’Nan, Stewart, 1961—
The good wife / Stewart O’Nan.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-312-42501-5
EAN 978-0-312-42501-2
1. Prisoners’ spouses—Fiction. 2. Separation (Psychology)—Fiction. 3. Mothers and sons—Fiction. 4. Married women—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3565.N316G67 2005
813’.54—dc22
2004053247
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