The Pretend Wife

by Bridget Asher

“I know that?”

  Jennifer walked into the kitchen then, filling a vase with water. “She’s out of it today. She wanted more morphine, but this is what it does to her.”

  Elliot nodded. “She was talking to her dead sister all night.” And I realized that Elliot hadn’t slept. He was wearing the same clothes from the night before.

  “I have to head out early,” I said. “I’m so sorry. This is hard, but there’s something at home.”

  “Oh,” Jennifer said, glancing at Elliot. “Well, this is more than we could have hoped for anyway.” She opened a packet of flower food and sprinkled it into the vase. “If it’s easier, I can tell Mom. I can explain. She’s so out of it, she may not understand. Don’t worry.”

  “I’ll go in and say a proper good-bye.”

  “Okay.” Jennifer walked toward the living room. “I’m sorry you have to go,” she said. “It’s been great having you here, to have someone’s new energy, a distraction from …” She didn’t finish the sentence. She smiled. “Don’t worry about it.” And then she walked out.

  A few minutes later, I had my bag and I was sitting in the chair pulled up to Vivian’s bedside, telling her that I was needed at home. Elliot was pacing in the background and Jennifer was standing by, holding Porcupine.

  Vivian was restless. Her eyes were closed. She said, “If I lived in Japan in the good old days, I’d have walked up a mountain to die in the snow, like a good old useless person by now.” And then she shook her head. “Ice!” And I thought she was correcting herself—as if she’d meant that she should have died in the ice by now, not the snow. But I was wrong. Jennifer repositioned Porcupine and scooped up an ice chip from a glass and slipped it into her mother’s mouth.

  “I’m glad we got to talk yesterday,” I said, and I slipped my hand through the guardrails into her hand. She grabbed my hand tightly and looked at me, surprised to find me there. Then she waved her kids out of the room. “Go!” she said. “Leave us alone.”

  Elliot and Jennifer paused. Then Jennifer put down the cup of ice chips and said, “Okay, Porcupine, let’s go find Bib.” She walked out of the room and Elliot reluctantly followed.

  Vivian was coherent now, but struggling. She stared at me as if trying to see me through a dark tunnel. She said, “What’s true is true.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I’ve always felt sorry for newlyweds. Doom, doom, doom. I was a damaged girl and I made a damaged decision in a mate … back in the Stone Age. But you and Elliot have found each other. It’s a thing beyond luck, beyond wisdom.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  She appraised me then and looked suddenly angry. “Oh, you’ve no idea! I cannot stand how young people waltz around with no conceivable idea!”

  “I-I … I’m sorry,” I said, unsure of how to read her anger.

  “Listen to me,” she said. “Let me put it thusly. Bib is afraid of the nesting eagles.”

  “I know,” I said, assuming she was half-dreaming.

  But then she gripped my hand. “You don’t know!”

  “I’m trying to understand,” I said.

  “If you let fear make your decisions for you, fear will make good decisions—but only for its own sake, not yours.” She shook her head, as if to start again, more calmly this time. “Bib is afraid of the nesting eagles and doesn’t want to stand in the field because she thinks they’ll have a good eye on her and they’ll take her from us. Right off the land. I tell her that one day she’ll need to be brave if she wants to marry the man she truly loves.”

  This took me by surprise. I wasn’t sure what to say. “Bib is a brave girl.”

  “And I tell you to stand in the field with a big rake and not be afraid of the nesting eagles.” She stared at me—her eyes suddenly steely. I wondered if she’d confused me and Bib in some strange way, but I also knew that she hadn’t. This is what she wanted to tell me. Her eyes were so sharp, so tightly trained on mine. “What’s true is true,” she said. “Right?”

  I nodded.

  “Marriage is a crock!” she said. “But love isn’t. What’s true is true,” she said again and then closed her eyes.

  “What’s true is true,” I said.

  She nodded and loosened her grip on my hand. I stood and picked up my bag.

  She said something so softly I couldn’t hear it.

  I leaned forward. “What did you say?”

  She whispered again hoarsely, “I’d recognize you anywhere.” She opened her eyes and stared at me.

  I felt off balance and grabbed the back of a chair. I was sure that in that moment, she knew exactly who I was. “Excuse me?”

  She blinked a few times in quick succession, as if clearing her mind. “Stay,” she said. “Just a few more days. I’m dying, for God’s sake.”

  WE SEEM TO THINK that things in life are clearly labeled as right and wrong, as if the world’s been divvied up by someone with a giant ink pad and two rubber stamps. We’re deeply invested in the notion that when we choose to do the wrong thing, it’s because we’re weak or lazy or compelled by our desires or our overriding ids. Because, if this is the case, then we can blame those who do the wrong thing and pin on them the suffering that wrongness causes. And, if the world comes clearly labeled and people fail to do the right thing because of their own shortcomings, then we can believe that doing wrong is easily avoidable. We can believe that we can do right and we can be good.

  I used to believe this more or less, because there is some truth in it, somewhere. But this theory sells life short. The world isn’t that simple, and the labels of right and wrong, if they exist at all, get smeared to the point of illegibility. And then where are you? Or, more pointedly, where was I?

  I was staying. At the time, I thought it was wrong because I felt like I was giving in to something and I’ve always associated that feeling of giving in with weakness. I thought that it was all wrapped up in Elliot. I think I wanted to believe that I was using Vivian’s plea for me to stay as an excuse to linger here in this house, stricken as it was with so much grief and love, to linger in my role as Elliot’s wife. But it wasn’t that simple. It had to do with Vivian herself. It had to do with this woman, this mother, and the fact that I needed something from her. Of course, I barely understood any of this at the time.

  I walked back into the kitchen carrying my stuff. Elliot had the restless air of someone in a doctor’s waiting room—he looked at me expectantly, his arms crossed, his eyes wide. Jennifer was holding Porcupine and waving to Bib from the open French door, leading to the deck. I could see Bib in her waders, waving back like a sailor on a ship.

  “I’m staying,” I said.

  Jennifer turned around. “Oh, good,” she said, relieved.

  “How did she do it?” Elliot asked, referring to his mother.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “She’s a force. An unwieldy force.”

  “I warned you about that,” he said, and then he smiled broadly. “I’m glad you’re staying.”

  “Me too.”

  First, I called Eila. I used the rotary phone in Elliot’s bedroom, and was pretty sure that I was timing the call after Eila’s tai chi class, in hopes of getting her at her most subdued.

  “Eila!” she said, as if shouting her own name were an acceptable way of answering the phone.

  “Hi, it’s Gwen.”

  “Gwen,” she said, letting out a full breath. The fact that it was only me meant that she didn’t have to put on the whole show—maybe just a quarter of the show. I always wondered what the real Eila—or, well, that would be Sheila—was like.

  “I have a sick relative. I came for the weekend and they need me to stay longer.”

  “A sick relative?” she asked. “What kind?”

  I wasn’t sure what she meant—what kind of sick or what kind of relative—so I answered both. “My mother-in-law has cancer.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, although neither sincerity nor empathy were her strong suits. “How is Peter takin
g it?”

  I was surprised that she remembered my husband’s name. “Better than I thought he would.”

  “When will you be back? The Westons, the Murphys, the Greers.”

  “I’m hoping just a few days,” I said. “Hopefully, I’ll be back for the Greers, Wednesday afternoon.”

  “Let’s make that essential. The Greers on Wednesday. I need you, darling!” And then she started talking to her dog, Pru, and hung up.

  Peter was next. I wasn’t sure what to expect from him. I dialed our home number on the rotary, sat down on the edge of the bed, and waited for him to answer. On the bedside table, I noticed a small boat—the kind that would normally sit in a bottle. I picked it up. It was light as if made of balsa wood. I was expecting the answering machine to kick in, but Peter answered at the last moment, a little breathless.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s me,” I said.

  “How are things with you, Mrs. Hull?” he said jokingly, and I kind of wished he hadn’t sounded so chipper.

  “Not perfect,” I said, thinking that I could tell him—right now—about having kissed Elliot on the lake. I set the little balsa wood boat down on the night table. “Where have you been? You sound like you’re out of breath.”

  “I was doing sit-ups with the music cranked and almost didn’t hear the phone.”

  “Do you crank the music while I’m not home? Is that why the neighbors give me dirty looks?”

  “AC/DC,” he said. I imagined him suddenly in a different life—a beloved bachelorhood—a life where he had the time to acquire his perfect abs, but he’d have a stagnant taste in clothes and hair products and music and pop culture references. Hadn’t I kept him up-to-date, refusing to let him stagnate in an era, as bachelors so often do? I was good for Peter, I decided. He needed me, but, in the same moment, I wondered if he needed me in a way that really mattered. “So what’s going on?”

  “I have to stay a few more days.” I saw Vivian in my mind’s eye, the way she looked at me when she’d said, I’d recognize you anywhere. The moment she’d said those words to me, my heart felt full and taut, and now just thinking of them, the feeling was back. My chest filled with pressure. I closed my eyes for a moment and took a deep breath.

  “Really?” Peter said. I couldn’t read his tone—was he just surprised or was he enjoying his faux bachelorhood and cranked-up AC/DC?

  “Don’t act too bent up about it,” I said.

  “No, no,” he said. “You just caught me off guard. What’s going on?”

  “She’s doing badly,” I said. “And I feel like I’m helping some, an extra pair of hands.” I felt guilty now. I hadn’t really helped much. I hadn’t done the dishes even. I added quickly, “I think I’ll make my vegetarian lasagna tonight and do the Mrs. Fogelman deep-freeze standbys.” When I was twelve or so, Mrs. Fogelman had been the head honcho of community outreach at her church, and she and my father made a deal that I would help her out every time she cooked for charity. I learned how to make every casserole known to man, how to divvy it up in single portions and store them in freezer bags. When I went to a few conferences as a communications director, I loaded the freezer for Peter just so, but overestimated my time away and we ended up eating from the Ziploc bags for months.

  “It’s your forte,” he said, although he pronounced forte as fort. It was a joke of my father’s, one that’s only funny if you don’t intend it to be. “Stay and help.”

  “I called Eila,” I said. I put my finger on the top of the balsa wood boat’s sail. It was on hinges so the sail lowered down. “She was okay with it. I caught her right after tai chi.”

  “Smart thinking.”

  There was a lull in the conversation. I wondered if he was trying on jealousy again—if he was feeling tight in the collar. Or maybe we both knew that if I started to talk about what was going on, it would open up a longer, darker conversation.

  “I miss you,” Peter said.

  And I knew that he was wrapping things up. “I miss you too,” I said.

  “Keep the updates coming,” he said.

  “And you take it easy on the neighbors.”

  “I will,” he said. “Scout’s honor.”

  I hung up the phone—the earpiece was so heavy that it was satisfying, in a strange way, to settle it in its cradle. The little boat caught my eye again. I pushed its sails up and down and back up again, wondering what had happened to the boat’s bottle. I assumed it was broken—an errant football being tossed across the room knocking it off a shelf—but the boat with its airy body and its light frame survived intact, a little artifact of Elliot Hull’s childhood. What did that mean, metaphorically? A waterless, bottleless boat?

  Vivian was dozing and Jennifer was exhausted, so Elliot and I offered to take Porcupine and Bib to the grocery store with us while I shopped for the fixings for Mrs. Fogelman’s deep-freeze standbys. In the driveway, Elliot and I tried to figure out the complex straps of Porcupine’s car seat.

  “That way,” I said.

  “Nope. I think it’s this way,” he said.

  We jiggled the straps and crisscrossed them and laughed. Finally, Bib got too impatient and did it for us. “See!” she said. “It’s easy!”

  “For you,” Elliot said.

  “She’s a child prodigy,” I said.

  “I have a very high IQ,” Bib said.

  “Do they test that in school?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Elliot drove Jennifer’s minivan. “I feel like I’m at the helm of the Proud Mary,” he said, squaring his strong shoulders. “This thing is massive.”

  “Who’s Proud Mary?” Bib asked from the backseat.

  “To explain Proud Mary I’d have to start with the steamboat industry,” Elliot said. “Then move to the sixties and Credence Clearwater Revival, and then I’d have to go over Ike and Tina Turner,” he said.

  “And you’d have to explain what it’s like workin’ for the man every night and day,” I said.

  “It’s really hard to work for the man,” Elliot said.

  “Who’s the man?” Bib asked.

  Elliot didn’t answer. He just started singing the song. I kicked in some backup—a few low rollin’s and some hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo, which seemed to amaze Porcupine. We were pretty terrible, but distracting, and that was our overriding mission. I wondered when I’d tell him that his mother knew the truth. She’d recognize me anywhere. Why did those words strike me so deeply, even when my mind just gave them a glance? I couldn’t explain it, but I knew that Elliot would have a theory. I wasn’t sure that I was ready for his theories, though, about me, about mothers. He knew me so well, but I wasn’t sure how it was possible. Had I once been brave enough to hand over that much of myself? I was young then. I didn’t know any better, but I did know better now, didn’t I? We came to a red light and I had to fight the urge to lean over the seat and kiss him. He was so kissable.

  In the store, we cruised the aisles. Porcupine was now in one of the shopping cart’s baby seats and Bib was asking about every odd item she couldn’t immediately place—coconut milk, saffron rice, dried black-eyed peas, a pumice stone, headless fish laid out on ice chips. We did our best taking turns explaining, while trying to gather stuff for multiple recipes at once. Porcupine started to cry so I held him and bounced and pointed out things with my elbows and sandals. “Some of that,” I’d say. “Um, no, no, the bigger size. That one.” And there was Elliot, looking at my legs, my pointed toes. “This one? Or this one? This one here? Or that one there?”

  When we got to the check-out line, Porcupine was asleep and he suddenly seemed to be made of rocks. My arms were burning, and Elliot remembered that we were missing bread, of all things. He and Bib went running off and left me at the checkout.

  “They’ll just be a minute,” I told the cashier.

  “It’s a good thing your husband helps out. You’ve got your hands pretty full,” the cashier said.

  I almost corrected her,
saying that he wasn’t my husband and these weren’t our kids, but Elliot was supposed to be my husband, so I just smiled and nodded and even threw in a tired shrug as if to say: Oh, well, this is the way it is!

  When Elliot and Bib reappeared in view, I was relieved to see them. “Here they come!” I said, but it was more than a simple kind of joy. I felt like they were racing back to me, for me. I remembered Elliot’s experience a few days earlier, running into the guy he’d known in high school with his full cart and his kids. Right now, taking long fast-walking strides, like a cross-country skier, he seemed to be gliding. He seemed happy. This was what he’d wanted, wasn’t it? Bib looked happy too, swinging two bags of bread in her fists.

  “Here we are!” she yelled. “Here we are!”

  Here was this beautiful simple moment—this sweaty baby, this kid still wearing her rubber boots, Elliot and me in a grocery store being mistaken for a family. My childhood had suffered a gaping hole. I’d never felt absolutely in my element in any job. And had I ever felt truly and deeply myself with Peter? In this moment, pretending to be someone else’s wife, being mistaken as the mother that I wasn’t, I felt like I was where I was meant to be.

  I COOKED THE REST OF the day—lasagnas, squash casserole, quiches, a thick potato soup. Elliot chopped vegetables. Bib measured and stirred. Jennifer moved in and out. And Porcupine’s face was sometimes bobbing over her shoulder, sometimes over Elliot’s, and then sometimes I’d find him on my own—my hands dusted in flour or gritty from potato skins. At one point, I remembered what it was like to be bustling around Mrs. Fogelman in her kitchen on a Sunday afternoon, preparing meals for people who’d just had a baby or who were coming home from surgery or who’d suffered a loss. There was a feeling of greater purpose. Dr. Fogelman steered clear, and Mrs. Fogelman and I became a well-oiled machine, gliding around each other, cracking eggs, whisking, setting up various timers for different dishes. Sometimes I would pretend that she was my mother. I would refuse to look at her face, concentrating instead on the middle of her body, her pale, freckled arms, and the apron tied around her waist. I loved it most of all when it was quiet except for a radio she had set up on the back of a counter. I thought I almost knew what it was like to have a mother, but then eventually she would say something and I would look up and it would be Mrs. Fogelman, not my mother at all.