His Other Wife

by Deborah Bradford

  Simply put, Eric knew he had been wrong. But Pam had come into his office asking questions about his likes and dislikes, trying to define his tastes, at a time when Hilary had been distant. It had started when Pam had told him about a walnut desk she’d found. It’s quite the handsome piece, she’d said. It fits you, Eric. There had been a lunch. A celebratory dinner out after her work on his office was finished. Phone calls and texts. There had been a second night, when Pam had come to town for a different client, dinner at an expensive steak house near the lakeshore, after which they’d sat on a bench beside the water, holding hands while a man played James Taylor songs on an acoustic guitar.

  Sometime during the James Taylor street music, they had danced. He had pulled Pam up by the hand and she had moved into his arms, fit herself against him the way a water creature curls inside its shell. Somewhere during the song, he had told her she was the most desirable woman he’d ever known. After which he had tipped the guitar player a hundred-dollar bill because he’d been so grateful just to have a safe place to spend time with her.

  He’d driven her back to her hotel and left his car with the valet so he could walk her to her room and kiss her good night at the door. Which was what he’d intended to do.

  Only he hadn’t. And he hadn’t stopped to think what he could lose, not then. Later it surprised him that he’d so easily forgotten to think about Seth or his parents or his wife. He’d ignored all these sound reasons and drifted forward on the promise of intrigue, warmth, risk. He’d been excited. A little infatuated. Willing to add this forbidden thing to his life in the same calculating way that someone might add an extra room to a house.

  He hadn’t stopped to think of the people who would judge him, or the people he would hurt.

  Those people weren’t a part of this world. He didn’t see how they could ever be.

  Seth soon came to see his life divided into two parts. First, the part when his mom and dad had been together. They’d done things like going to Cubs games or riding the L all the way to the Loop for pizza. They’d driven three days to camp in Yellowstone, where he’d drifted off to sleep watching the fire dancing beyond the wall of the tent and the shadow cast by his parents as they’d pulled their chairs closer to each other and to the flames. Second, the part after his father had decided he didn’t want them anymore. When Seth’s mom cranked the water in the shower because that might keep him from hearing her sobs. When the kitchen was as silent as church that one day even though his mom and dad were both sitting there. When the tension in their house felt as if it might shatter like glass and cut them.

  “You’re handling this well,” his dad had told Seth over chocolate ice cream at Baskin-Robbins. “You haven’t even cried. I’m proud of you, Son.”

  “When are you leaving, Dad?” he’d asked.

  “Tomorrow.”

  “You don’t have to leave if you don’t want to,” Seth had said, a twelve-year-old hating himself because he’d started to sob. Melted fudge ripple dripped down his cone. He let it drip, didn’t try to lick it off. “You can stay, Dad.”

  “No,” his dad had told him. “Things have gone too far for that.”

  That’s the moment his mother started needing him. From that moment, he had felt like the statue of Atlas, with the whole world balanced on his shoulders. If he slipped or stopped trying or anything went wrong, the whole world would come crashing down.

  That last day with his dad, Seth had told jokes, told them frantically, thinking if he could make his dad laugh, maybe he could make his dad change his mind, maybe he could make his dad realize what he was leaving behind.

  Why did the kid eat his homework, Dad? Because the teacher said it was a piece of cake.

  What do you get when you cross an elephant with a fish, Dad? Do you know? Swimming trunks.

  “You’re so good to take care of your mom, Seth,” people he barely knew said after his dad had gone. “I don’t know what she would do without you.”

  Or they’d say, “Look at you. You’re so grown-up. You’re the man of the house now.”

  Seth knew what his mother’s friends thought about him. They thought he was the perfect kid. People thought they knew what they were getting with Seth, but they were wrong. He just wanted to be a kid everybody wasn’t watching and depending on. He wanted to do stupid things; he wanted to make a mistake and not feel like the bottom of his mother’s world was going to fall out because of it.

  When he’d gotten in the fight with Chris Schorr on the playground, Seth had never intended to stop hitting. The principal had yanked him off by the collar and dragged him into the office. He wanted to keep pounding and pounding the kid who had told him his dad had a girlfriend.

  “Liar,” Seth had said every time his knuckles met Chris’s face. “Liar. Liar.” When Mr. Baker asked why, Seth would have been vindicated if he had wailed out what had happened. But Seth sat in the principal’s chair feeling like a mad animal lived inside him, something that took over his body and made him want to be mean. It’s none of your business! Seth wanted to shout. Instead he sat silent, too proud to speak, his bloody hand throbbing in his lap. And when the school secretary, Mrs. Knight, had poked her head in and asked if he wanted her to make a call, Mr. Baker had shaken his head. “Don’t phone Seth’s mom, Nora,” Mr. Baker had said as he’d offered Seth a conciliatory smile. “This isn’t anything Seth and I can’t work out together. His mom’s got enough problems of her own. I’m sure Seth agrees this isn’t something we should bother her with.”

  From then on Seth carried this anger beneath his skin. His frustration ran just below the surface, unseen and churning like an underground river, something he vowed he’d never let his mother see. That’s when Seth had known the truth. Chris Schorr hadn’t been the biggest liar on earth. His dad had been.

  Chapter 1

  Six years later

  When Hilary opened the door to the coffeehouse, a burst of conversation and the aroma of Arabica swirled out to meet her. She stepped into the front foyer and looked for her friends. I don’t need this, she’d told Gina Minor, trying to beg off. I don’t even want to think about it. Hilary had been doing her best to shelve Seth’s graduation in the back of her mind alongside the other items she planned to think about later: the need to draw up a will, the need to add more insulation in the crawl space.

  It had been Gina’s idea that they meet on Tuesdays in that big corner booth at Spilling the Beans on North Central Avenue. They could brown-bag if they liked or buy a salad and order up a Brownlow or a coffee. Gina, who worked with Hilary on the nursing staff at the hospital, had always been the one to organize things. They were a group of friends who had known one another forever, several of them with kids graduating, another with a mother she’d just admitted to an assisted-living center, another going through a tough divorce. Gina was the one who always reminded them how they needed to stick together and encourage one another, because they could give one another advice, a gentle hug, laughter, strength.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t count on me for coffee,” Hilary had told Gina when the invitation had been issued. “I doubt I can get away from this new rotation schedule. You know me.”

  “Denial,” Gina had said, laughing. “It’s not just a river in Egypt.” Which, although intended to be funny, hadn’t made Hilary laugh at all.

  “This won’t go away just because you won’t let yourself deal with it,” Gina had pressed. “I have just as much time as you do. Trust me. I’ve been through this. I know how lost you’re going to feel without Seth.”

  Well, Hilary reasoned as she stared at the menu overhead, trying to focus on the list of coffee drinks, maybe Gina was right. Only today she certainly didn’t intend to be the one to soak up the sympathy at the table. She’d come to support Julie, the newest divorcée. You’ll make it to the other side of your divorce with flying colors, just like I did, Hilary would tell her. Sure, she’d tell Julie, there were times when it had been rough. Sure, she could say, she still remembered th
at train wreck like it had been yesterday — the day Eric had stood in their bedroom and told her he loved someone else. But she hadn’t let the pain derail her for very long. She hadn’t let the loneliness or the anger stop her from moving ahead with her life.

  The barista was making Hilary a decaf cappuccino, the steamed milk hissing from the machine. As she took the cup in hand, she glanced up to see Lynn waving at her from the designated table. Hilary smiled back and wove her way toward her friends. When she slid into the booth, the conversation had already turned to the high-school seniors, graduating this year from Jefferson High on Chicago’s North Side.

  “They say these will be the best years of our lives.” Kim Draper was tucking a tomato inside her sandwich. “I read an article by one woman who got through her empty-nest syndrome by putting tuition on credit cards. We could do that. We could make a pact to earn frequent-flyer miles together. Think of the places we could go with all those miles.”

  Fay reached across the table and snagged one of Donna’s sweet-potato chips. “Next meeting on the beach somewhere. Or maybe Times Square.”

  “Who can afford Times Square?” Doubt filled Kim’s eyes and Hilary could tell she wanted the same reassurances Hilary did: Mothering doesn’t go away when they leave home, does it? It just changes? Right?

  She pictured her eighteen-year-old’s face. If she’d felt like she’d been drowning after Eric had left, then Seth’s presence in the house had felt like someone bringing oxygen to her, allowing her to breathe underwater. It had been so easy to start treating Seth like the man of the house. It had been so easy to start depending on him.

  I have to let him go, Lord. I know I do.

  And I don’t know what I’m going to do without him.

  Fay must have read her expression. “Just keep the kitchen open, girl. He’ll come home more than you think.”

  “Just wait until Seth wants to move back in, Hilary,” Gina said. “We’ll be here for each other then, too. That’s when you can cry.”

  But not one of them mentioned the major difference, Hilary realized. They all talked about Seth coming home. Rather than being home. Once he crossed the gym stage and the school superintendent handed Seth his diploma, she wouldn’t have anything left of him to hang on to. No more nights curled up together reading Go, Dog, Go! No more sweaty little head propped beneath her chin. No more soggy bottom in a bathing suit. No more epic drives to baseball games with six players crammed into the seats, babbling on about girls and their batting averages while they shot spitballs at one another.

  No more terror as she stomped an imaginary brake on the passenger’s side of the car, teaching Seth to drive. No more mornings feeling responsible when he couldn’t drag himself out of bed.

  Actually, Hilary admitted, it had been awhile since she’d worried about any of these mothering duties, even the teenager ones. She had this to consider: Was she really grieving her son’s growing up and moving out for good? Or was she more afraid of being alone for the first time in her life?

  Kim left the booth to pick up her order. Gina was talking to an acquaintance at the door. Donna and Fay were waiting in line to order lunch, deep in a conversation about whether or not to order the college-dorm package with extra-long twin sheets for their kids’ beds. Which left Hilary and Julie fingering their mugs as they leaned toward each other, each waiting for the other to speak.

  Julie’s eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Hilary. I’m so sorry. I’m not great company these days.”

  “Been rough, has it?”

  “Yes, more than I ever imagined. I shouldn’t be here, I guess. So many of you are dealing with graduating seniors. And me, I’m dealing with this divorce and I’m a mess. I don’t have anything worthwhile to add to the conversation.”

  Hilary reached for Julie’s hand and squeezed it. “It’s good you came, Jules. You know that. Anything any of us can do to help, we’ll do it.”

  “His lawyer delivered the papers this morning, Hilary. It was awful.”

  There weren’t many words of comfort for this, Hilary knew. She held her friend’s hand and let Julie cry. “I’m so sorry.”

  “How did you do it, Hilary?” Julie pulled her hand away and blew her nose on a napkin. “How did you get through it? Does it keep hurting like this forever?”

  Hilary rummaged through her purse to find an extra tissue. When she found one, she handed it to Julie. “On the day Eric’s lawyer showed up at the door, it was horrible.” She remembered standing on the front step, the edges of the document in her hand rustling like dried leaves, hearing her own lifeless voice asking when the papers needed to be signed, where they needed to be delivered.

  “Can you imagine having that job?” Julie touched the edges of her eyes with the tissue and offered a sad smile. “I’d hate it.”

  Hilary gave a wry laugh. “Yeah. Me, too.”

  “You never talked about your divorce much.”

  “You want me to talk about it?” Hilary propped her elbows on the table. “I was a blubbering, sobbing wreck of a human being for eight solid weeks. I don’t think I missed an hour without crying.” She locked eyes with Julie. “You really want to hear all this stuff ?”

  Julie nodded. “I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want to hear it.”

  “I just kept thinking, How could he do this? How could Eric just throw away all those years we’d spent together? How could he give up on half our lives?”

  Julie watched a sparrow flit past the window. “No,” she said. “Really, Hilary. It’s more than half. At least it is for me.”

  “I used to wake myself up in the middle of the night crying. It was like there was some physiological thing happening to me,” Hilary said. “Like my body required a certain number of tears every day just to sustain itself.”

  The diners beside them were clearing their table themselves, carrying their plates and baskets to the self-service tub. “It helps so much to hear it. Really.” Julie lowered her voice as a restaurant employee followed them and wiped the table with a rag. “It helps so much to know that I’m not the only one to go through this.”

  “It gets easier, Julie. It takes time, but, eventually, it does pass. You stop trying to second-guess yourself. You stop asking yourself what you could have done differently.”

  As the other women returned to the table, it was Julie’s turn to grip Hilary’s hands. “Thank you.”

  “Call me any time you want to talk.” Hilary scooted sideways to make room for Fay next to her. “And you’ll see. You’ll figure out who you are without him. You’ll wake up and realize one day that you aren’t thinking about your divorce all the time.”

  “You have no idea how much I need to hear this, Hilary.”

  “You’ll see yourself through God’s eyes. You’ll see how much you’re worth. How much you can do.”

  Yes, Hilary could speak with authority on this subject. This was exactly how it had happened for her. Somewhere along the way, after her pain had been replaced by anger, after her anger had ebbed into a dull sadness that had seemed to sap every ounce of strength from her body, she’d awakened one day and felt like someone had turned on the sun in the sky again.

  Because of Seth, her sleep had started to come easier. Mothering Seth had become good therapy for her. Maybe, in Eric’s eyes, she’d failed as a wife. But just let anyone try to accuse Hilary of not being a good mother! Now Seth stood six-foot-one and could bench-press 230 pounds. But he’d better know good and well that his mother still laid down the law around this place!

  It was time to let him go. Although Seth wouldn’t leave for Emhurst College until late August, Hilary had felt his presence fading from the house for months now, each milestone of his senior year at Jefferson — the SATs, the college acceptance letters, scholarship night, the senior prom — drawing him one more step away.

  While Hilary had been in her own thoughts, the subject at the table had shifted to husbands. “I was looking at Don across the table the other night,” Ka
ren was saying, “and I kept thinking, What did we do together before we had kids? I honestly don’t remember.”

  “There’s that line in Failure to Launch,” Fay said, “when Kathy Bates finally tells her son that she’s terrified of being left alone in the same house with her husband. I thought that was the best scene in the whole movie.”

  Well, Hilary thought. At least I don’t have that problem. Hilary caught herself eyeing her empty ring finger, the small indentation from her wedding band still visible despite the years she hadn’t worn it.

  When Fay glanced at her watch and announced she needed to get back to the office, Hilary knew she’d found her perfect exit. She needed to get back to her nursing duties; she had several new care plans to write up this afternoon. But as Hilary wadded up her napkin and gave Julie one more reassuring squeeze, her cell phone played its song inside her purse. The interruption sent her rummaging through the zippered pockets, trying to find her phone so she could silence it. She saw the flash of light to the left of her keys. Just as she reached to push the vibrate button, she saw the caller ID.

  Eric. Speaking of.

  Her breath caught in her throat.

  What on earth does he want?

  Hilary knew she ought to be able to ignore him, turn him off, pay no heed to his summons. But she was still programmed to answer to this man. Even after everything they’d been through over the years, after the way he’d hurt her, after all the promises she’d made to God and to herself, after all the promises Eric had broken, she read this man’s name and her heart beat faster.

  “I’ve got to take this.”

  Hilary slid sideways out of the booth. I’m sorry, she mouthed as Kim moved out of her way. She wove past the line at the cash register and shoved the door open with her shoulder. “Hello,” she said, keeping her voice measured as the cell bobbled against her ear. But even though she tried, she couldn’t totally erase the familiarity she’d once used with him. “Eric? What’s wrong?”