The Pretend Wife

by Bridget Asher

  I couldn’t remember ever having cooked with Peter. We’d shared a kitchen from time to time. He’d be fretting over one dish and me over another. But we never cooked together. This was different. Elliot and I swatted at each other and took time out to say, “Smell this fresh mint.” We brushed past each other in the small space between the counter and the island and the stove. I’d never been so aware before of the sexy physicality of cooking—the bending, the balancing, the whisking, the urgency of the dinging bells keeping everything speeding along and then slowing down, the dipping and straightening, the bowing to the food again and again. With Elliot in the kitchen, cooking wasn’t just a service. It was more of an art, something you could infuse with love and attention to detail. It was sensual.

  I thought of Bettina and Shweers. Was this the way life was for them? Was everything—even the simplest drudgeries of drying dishes—richer because they were together? I felt like my body wasn’t just my own. Instead it seemed to stretch out to include Elliot. I was aware of him at every turn. I could feel him shuffling behind me or reaching in front of me. Elliot Hull in his baggy shorts, after all this time. Sometimes it seemed as if I’d known him forever.

  Eventually I used up all of the Hulls’ Pyrex dishes and pots and pans. I’d filled all of the pie crusts. The counters were lined with food set out to cool. The kitchen was hot and steamy, but it smelled good.

  “She can cook!” Jennifer said.

  “Turns out she can cook a lot,” Elliot said.

  “But is it quantity or quality?” Jennifer asked, sidling up to the quiches.

  “Only one way to find out,” I said.

  We ate some from each dish, leaving most of it for the freezer. We also had saffron rice and coconut milk, things we’d picked up at Bib’s request. Vivian was still dozing. An early dose of morphine had only taken the edge off. She’d asked for more and the second dose had knocked her out. I’d hoped to feed her, to have made something that she was hungry for, but it still felt good to see everyone gathered around the table, eating and mmm-ing and reaching across each other to refill their plates.

  After dinner, Bib suggested a game of Pictionary.

  Jennifer bowed out—Porcupine was fussing. “It’s time for the night-night routine.”

  I offered to sit with Vivian. “To keep her company,” I said.

  “I’m a master at Pictionary,” Elliot said to me. “I once drew a gazebo in four seconds. You might miss some true artistry.”

  “I once drew a carrot and Uncle Elliot thought it was a surfboard,” Bib said. “And he just kept telling me that it was a surfboard when it wasn’t.”

  “And then I pouted,” he said. The kiss in the rowboat flashed in my mind. His lips. It made my stomach flip. Out side, it was growing dark. I wondered if we’d find ourselves alone again, and, if we did, what would happen?

  “Keep all the drawings and fill me in later,” I said.

  “Our masterpieces,” Elliot corrected. “Right, Bib?”

  She smiled sheepishly. “Right.”

  The head of Vivian’s hospital bed was elevated. Her eyes were closed. Her hair had flipped onto her face as if she’d been sleeping restlessly. I wasn’t sure what to do. I knew that I wanted something from her. I’d recognize you anywhere. I wanted her to say those words again or something, anything, that would make me feel like I’d been found. How long had I felt like a child lost at the beach holding a pail that knocked against her legs, disoriented by family after family huddled under beach umbrellas. Out of all of the women who could have been mother figures for me—Mrs. Fogelman had done her best; Eila would never work out; Peter’s mother was too cold and had never liked me much—I wished, in this moment, that I hadn’t pinned all of my hopes on this one woman. She was dying. I wouldn’t have enough time to absorb all of the maternal love that I was lacking.

  I sat in the recliner across the room, afraid I’d wake her if I got too close. But she seemed to sense I was there and soon enough her eyes were open and she was looking at me. “Giselle,” she said. “I saved them in the middle of the night.”

  “I’m not Giselle,” I said, crossing to her bedside so that she could see me by the light of the lamp on the table. “It’s me.” I wasn’t sure what to call myself—Elizabeth or Gwen—so I just said again, “It’s me.”

  I put my hand on hers and she gripped it tightly. Her face was stricken with anger. She said, “Tell him the truth.” And then she pleaded. “Promise me that much!” I understood that Giselle must have disappointed her in life, many times over, deeply. I felt like a traitor—as Giselle and as myself.

  “I promise,” I said. “I’ll tell him.”

  Her hand relaxed. She closed her weary eyes. Tears slipped from them into her hair. “Fix my hair. It’s all a mess,” she whispered. “Fix my hair.”

  I pulled away a few wisps that were touching her cheek and then stroked her hair with my fingers and then my whole hand, again and again. Her hair was fine and soft. Oddly, now I felt like I was her mother, taking care of a fevered child, but that felt right too. Don’t the roles of mothers and daughters turn on themselves so that daughters become mothers? The roles are supposed to be fluid, one teaching the other to be a mother so they can, one day, be tended to like a child. I hadn’t realized that I would miss out on this too, tending to my mother in her old age. She would never grow old, not even in my mind’s eye. Even in my dreams, she was young and looked like she did to me when I was a kid. “Vivian?” I whispered. “Is there anything I can get for you?”

  She opened her eyes and then gazed at me. “They don’t know,” she said, “and I don’t want them to. Can I tell you?”

  “Of course, anything,” I said.

  “He left me for her,” she whispered. “My sister. Giselle.”

  I wasn’t sure how to respond. “Your husband?”

  “She came here to stay after living with some guy in Burbank. She was heartbroken and then I caught them together. He loved her, but she didn’t love him.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said.

  “She didn’t know how much she wanted to destroy me. She tried to steal everything from me. She was young. She loved me too, just as much as she hated me.” She pinched her eyes closed. “She’s dead now. A motor cycle accident out west. When you’re about to die, everything comes flooding back. It comes back disguised and strange. Her mice … I could feel them in my hands.”

  “It’s the morphine,” I said.

  “It’s the death,” she said. “Don’t tell the children.”

  “I won’t.”

  “They think it was a woman from town. Why change the story now?”

  “What’s the truth,” I asked, “the truth you wanted her to tell him?”

  “You promised,” she said, raising one finger. “You promised to tell him the truth—not Giselle. You.”

  “But I thought you didn’t want me to tell Elliot about this,” I said, confused.

  “Tell him your truth,” she said. “A promise is a promise.”

  In a few moments, Vivian’s breathing became soft and slow. She was asleep again. I wasn’t sure what to do or what I’d just promised. I wanted to tell Jennifer or Elliot, but of course I wouldn’t. She was sleeping peacefully now. I set her hand down on the bed sheets and took my seat in the recliner.

  Tell him now, I thought, watching the thin curtains puff and billow in the breeze. Tell him the truth. Promise me that much!

  I wondered about her husband, Elliot’s father, the affair with Vivian’s sister. How long had she carried this secret? Had she never told anyone before? I wondered if, on my own deathbed, I would want to tell some long-kept secret. I thought of my own men. Which one needed to be told the truth now? Peter or Elliot? And what was the truth? How could I tell anyone the truth if I didn’t know it myself?

  AFTER PORCUPINE AND BIB were both in bed, I found myself sitting on an Adirondack chair on the deck overlooking the lake. There was a cool breeze and the rippling water caught the moonlig
ht. By the dock, Bib’s white buckets seemed to glow. Elliot was inside. He’d taken over my watch of Vivian though she was sleeping soundly. Part of me hoped he’d fall asleep in the recliner and we could avoid being alone, avoid any more conversation. The day had been strangely wonderful—the grocery store trip, the steaming kitchen, the feeling of family, even if it was family brought together by this sadness. I didn’t want to dismantle it, but at the same time, I wanted to be alone with him, of course, more than anything, back out on the rowboat, spinning slow circles on the lake. Jennifer appeared with a bottle of red wine. She filled two glasses, handed me one, and sat down on the chair beside mine. “I know that you’re leaving things behind to be here,” she said. “I hope that’s okay with everyone.”

  I assumed she was talking about my marriage. “I think it’s fine,” I said. “My husband was cranking the AC/DC last I checked, pretending he’s twenty again.”

  “I think men can regress pretty easily. It doesn’t take much.” She smiled. “It must be a pretty good relationship if he’s letting you disguise yourself as someone else’s wife. I don’t think Sonny would go for it, even if it was for a good cause. And drummers are supposed to be really laid back.”

  “Peter doesn’t seem to mind,” I said, not indicating a good relationship or a bad one. I could tell she was fishing, maybe for Elliot’s sake? I wasn’t sure. “Your mother mistook me for Giselle,” I said, changing the subject.

  “Was she talking about Giselle again? She always gravitates to her when she’s in her dream states. It’s her younger sister. They were very close as children and didn’t get along well as adults. She died thirteen years ago.”

  “And your father,” I asked, “where is he these days?”

  “Arizona. She won’t let him come. She doesn’t want him to see her like this.”

  “Did she really love him, you know, deeply?”

  “I don’t know.” Jennifer stared into her wineglass. “After the divorce, he stayed away mainly, I think, because she made him feel so ashamed. She has that power. Her rightness and how sure she is of it, how convinced. It’s her worst trait.”

  I listened to the chirruping frogs. “She still believes in love, though,” I said.

  “Very much so, but not for her. Not men. She took the loss so hard. Maybe that’s what’s made her a true romantic. She hates to see love go to waste.”

  “She’s made me promise to tell the truth,” I said, smiling. “What truth? I don’t know. It was a general promise.”

  Jennifer squinted across the lake. There was a dock, strung with lights. “I don’t know if there is a truth.” She looked at me then. “Do you think that there are truths when it comes to matters of the heart? Absolute truths?”

  I shrugged.

  “You love someone or you don’t, but do you think life dictates the rest or can love dictate life?”

  I wasn’t sure whose life she was talking about now, mine or her mother’s. “I don’t know,” I said.

  She sat back in her chair, swirled her wine. “Well, now you know how Elliot felt.”

  “In what way?”

  “When he told her he was married. He had to. She has a way of making you say what she wants to hear.” She pulled her legs up to her chest. “Did you play along?”

  “I guess I did.”

  “When she asked you to promise to tell the truth, you did promise, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I did.”

  “And are you?” she asked, looking at me very frankly.

  “Am I what?” I said, pretending to be more confused than I was, hoping she would let the question evaporate.

  “Are you going to tell him the truth?”

  “Which him? Which truth?”

  “Any him,” she said. “Any truth.”

  Did she want me to tell my husband that I was in love with another man? Did she want me to confess to a kiss on a lake? Did she want me to tell Elliot how deep this ran and risk the perfectly good life that I had? I thought about Helen in the restaurant making us close our eyes and be thankful for just one minute for what we had. I had a good life and Peter was a good man, and who was I to want more? Did I feel like I deserved more than that? I didn’t believe in being entitled to the good life. Life was life. It handed out its sorrows randomly. You took what you got and you found something in it to be thankful for—that was your job as a human being.

  Jennifer must have sensed that I was riled. In fact, I felt a little goaded.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m overstepping.”

  “It’s okay,” I said and I meant it. We were just two women talking by a lake, drinking wine. These kinds of conversations have always made me uncomfortable—like a foreigner who speaks only a pidgin version of the language of women. But things happen between women in quiet conversations like these, important things. And, honestly, I knew that she was right to goad me. I needed it. I wasn’t one to goad myself. “You’re right. I think I have to tell the truth to someone,” I said. “A promise is a promise.”

  Some time passed—I don’t know how much. Jennifer grace fully redirected the conversation toward safer subjects—Bib’s experiments, the baby’s toes, which seemed to overlap strangely, the singer-guitarist whom hospice was sending over in the next few days to make a house call. “My mother’s never liked those people who just suddenly whip out a guitar and start a singalong. She claims that they’ve ruined church, and she said, and I quote, ‘It’s one of the reasons the seventies fell flat.’”

  I talked too, about work, trying to describe Eila and our clients in their überposh, stuffy, dismal homes, a greedy bunch, and how they always ended up clinging to Eila’s artistic gauziness. “It’s like they know what’s lacking in their lives and she knows how to lend it to them.” She asked me some decorating questions and I did my best to think of what Eila would suggest.

  After a lull, she asked me what song I would crank to pretend that I’m twenty again. That’s when Elliot arrived.

  “I have no idea,” I said.

  “No idea about what?” he asked.

  “I’d crank up some Van Morrison,” Jennifer said. “I was kind of nouveau hippie in my twenties.”

  “What would you crank up to remind you of being twenty?” I asked Elliot.

  “Is that the question you can’t answer?” he asked me.

  “I just can’t think,” I said.

  “You liked Smashing Pumpkins and I liked Pearl Jam, and you had a crush on Howard Jones and loved all of those theme songs to John Hughes films. And INXS, you were hooked at a young age.”

  I blushed, not just heat in my cheeks but down my neck and across my chest. “Right,” I said. “Howard Jones. He was elegant.”

  “How’s Mom?” Jennifer asked.

  “She’s sleeping soundly.”

  “And no peeps from upstairs?”

  “None,” he said.

  “I’ll go in, check on everyone.” She picked up the empty bottle of wine. “Good night!” she said over her shoulder.

  “Good night,” I said.

  And she disappeared into the house.

  Elliot walked to the deck railing and said, “You liked The Pretenders’ ‘I’ll Stand by You,’ and Pat Benatar, and although you’d never confess to it in public, you had the radio in your car—the little sputtery Toyota—set to the easy-listening station. And you had a clichéd side. When you were really pissed, you’d turn up Alanis Morissette, like every twenty-year-old girl back then. And Johnny Cash—you knew all of Johnny Cash and you blamed that on your father. And you also liked Rickie Lee Jones and you loved Carole King. You knew all the words. I assumed that your mother had those albums.”

  “How do you remember all of that?”

  “Each time I hear one of the songs I associate them with you. It all comes back. Every time.” He sighed. “From ‘I feel the earth move under my feet,’ to ‘No one is to blame.’ When I hear ‘Pretty in Pink’ on the radio, I have to listen to the whole thing—out of respe
ct for you.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “You’ve been brutalized all these years.”

  “I’m chivalrous. What can I say?”

  “You know,” I said, walking to the deck railing and standing next to him. “I’m curious. People ask you what you do, and you have to tell them you’re a philosophy professor. What do they say to that? I mean, it must be kind of …”

  “Embarrassing?”

  “No, it’s just that … I guess you could say you’re a philosopher. But then …”

  “They’d imagine me wearing white robes and eating grapes.”

  “Or you’d just be dead.”

  “Right, and I’m not dead yet.”

  “So, what do you do?”

  “Most philosophers usually lie about this. On a plane or something, I tell them I sell life insurance or Amway. I ask them if they’ve ever considered how Amway might improve their life.”

  “Can Amway improve my life?”

  “Absolutely.” The wind had made his eyes water and they were shining in the porch lights. “Look at me!”

  And I did look at him. I knew that I was going to have to go home at some point. This wouldn’t last, and I’d have to remember little moments like this—his bare feet, the frayed hems of his jeans, his shining eyes. My hand was an inch from his. He stretched his pinky and touched my pinky with his—like a sixth-grader.

  “I like you,” he said.

  “Really?” I said. “I had no idea.”

  “Actually,” he said, leaning in to whisper. “I don’t like you. I like-you like-you. This is serious.”

  “You liked Otis Redding,” I said. I remembered a mix tape he had and how he listened to it in his Walkman.

  “Shout Bamalama!” he said. “Otis, my man.”

  “You were right about Carole King and Rickie Lee Jones. My mother didn’t have a lot of albums, but I knew that those were her favorites, and I went through a phase in middle school, playing them over and over and over. My father must have known what was going on, that I wanted some kind of connection to her, and he never complained. They became our background music.” I thought about that for a moment. “It must have been hard for him. I never looked at it from his perspective before, but he let me do what I needed to.”