His Other Wife

by Deborah Bradford

  Hilary straightened a picture frame on the bookshelf while, bit by bit, the boys slipped casual details to her. They intended to camp together; they’d been gathering sleeping bags and gear for weeks. There was a huge spot reserved for the whole class in a campground, not too far away. That’s when Hilary realized what they were doing. They were trusting her and testing her at the same time. They wanted to know what she thought about their plans. Finally, Ian asked, “Seth’s Mom, if you knew about a party like this, would you let Seth go?”

  The frame in her hand contained a photo of Eric and Seth together. Eric was teaching Seth to cast a fishing rod, their arms in perfect sync, their hands on the reel, their eyes on the red and white bobber. “You want an honest answer?”

  But of course they did. This was where Hilary had stood so many times before, her heart straddling a fence. If she was too strict, she faced the possibility of pushing them away. The more she showed Seth that she trusted him, the more worthy of trust he became. Yet she was also aware of this: Seth’s age group didn’t always think things through to the end. She’d read somewhere that a young adult’s brain wasn’t totally developed until twenty-five or so. And they were still decades away from understanding their own mortality.

  “I don’t know. You’d be far away from anyone who could help you —”

  “We’d be okay,” Will said.

  “— and it seems like a lot of effort after the parents have already put something together.”

  Even Hilary could see past what she was telling them. They wanted to be on their own.

  She set down the frame and did away with a cobweb on the lampshade. “What I’m going to tell you is what I’ve told you before, you guys. You can be responsible for yourselves, but you can’t be responsible for someone else. When you get a group together that big, something usually gets out of hand.”

  Chase said, “We’ll be careful.”

  “Everybody feels the way we do, Mom. It’s tradition. The seniors do it every year.”

  “No matter how careful you are, guys, you know someone’s going to be drinking.” They stared at Hilary with innocent, round eyes, like they’d never heard that word before. Drinking. “That sort of thing comes with a big responsibility. You’ve got to make good choices. And you’ve got to think how you’re influencing other people.” There, she had said her piece. Seth knew how she felt about it.

  “We know that.” A couple of them inclined their heads in assent. She could almost believe they would heed her warning. Ian asked, “You had a senior party when you graduated, didn’t you?”

  Only then did Hilary exercise her right to remain silent.

  “See?” Seth said. “It’s the last chance our whole class has to be together. Ever.”

  And he was right about that, too.

  Maybe she was going against her own better judgment, saying yes. But she knew how it worked. If she didn’t give permission, Seth would sneak around behind her back and do it anyway.

  Hilary suddenly felt flippant about her son’s freedom, flippant about her own qualms. Why was she taking everything so seriously, anyway? Seth was graduating tomorrow. In spite of Pamela and Eric, they were supposed to be having fun. She was tired of grieving. She was tired of not being able to get past her own feelings so she could be happy for her son.

  “I wouldn’t have you miss it, Seth,” she said.

  Will jumped on it: “You’d let him go, then?”

  “Wouldn’t your parents let you go?” Hilary asked Will. Then she turned to Seth, but she was perfectly aware she was answering them all. “You’re eighteen. You’ve gotten good grades and you did great on your AP tests. You’re accepted into college with a scholarship.” Not three months from now, he wouldn’t even be living with her anymore. He could be staying out all night and never going to class, and, for a while at least, he wouldn’t have to answer to anyone. There has to come a time to let go, doesn’t there, Lord? “You know how to make the right choices. Right now, I don’t give a…a flying flip what you do.”

  “A flying flip?” Seth repeated, grinning. “A flying flip, Mom? Really?” He loved to critique her when she said something that was outdated or embarrassing, heaven forbid. He especially teased her when she said “I’m jazzed” about something. She couldn’t blame him, really. That phrase had stuck with her a long time. She happened to like being jazzed about things.

  She brought in the vacuum cleaner and began to unsnake the hose while the kids turned their attention back to the senior video. “Should we run this picture of Laura welding metal in the art studio or should we run this picture of her without teeth when she was seven?” Chase asked Hilary.

  “Do you have to choose?” she asked. “I think they’re both cute together. As a set. Laura then and Laura now.”

  “Okay,” Chase agreed. “We’ll use both.”

  That’s how their time together ended that afternoon, with Hilary standing in front of the TV screen, the vacuum upholstery nozzle forgotten in her hand. She watched the video shots as they came up, enjoying them as much as the boys did. She gave motherly suggestions of what they should include in the senior-class video, and what they should avoid. The same way Hilary had given them her opinion about the party. And for a moment, she felt smug, mistaken into thinking they might have been listening. Mistaken into thinking that a mom might actually be able to influence a group of teenagers to be careful.

  Chapter 3

  Hilary did find the time to rush out to buy fresh flowers for her mother in the guest room. She picked out fistfuls of red gerbera, yellow tulips, and blue royal iris from the tall buckets inside the shop cooler. While the florist arranged Hilary’s selections in a vase, Hilary roamed the small aisles lined with mysterious ornamental plants. The water fountain. The rich smell of soil. The scarlet etchings of an orchid bloom.

  The door opened, and even though Hilary recognized the woman who stepped inside, it took her one beat, two, to remember the woman’s name. She was Seth’s AP English teacher. Mrs. Winkler. Patty. Yes, that’s what it was.

  “Here you are.” The florist set the arrangement beside the register as Hilary pulled her check card from her purse. Mrs. Winkler, as Seth had always called her, recognized Hilary, too. She smiled.

  Hilary started off on a chatty, polite conversation. “I’ll bet you were ready to have those AP essays over and done with.” The florist handed back her card and the receipt. “I know Seth was sure happy to get his finished.”

  “Absolutely,” the teacher said, laughing, nodding toward the vase. “You getting ready for graduation?”

  “We are.”

  “Is it bad for a teacher to admit she’s almost as glad to be finished with a term as the students are?”

  Hilary laughed. “I wouldn’t think so. Not at all.”

  They continued chatting for a few minutes, talking about this and that, until Hilary said, “Thank you for what you did for my son.” Maybe it was sappy, she thought as she shouldered her purse and picked up the vase, but a little encouragement was always nice. “You’ve been a great teacher for Seth. He likes expressing himself on paper. He’s talked to me about your class; he’s enjoyed it.”

  “I’ve sure enjoyed reading what he’s written. Are you going to be okay after Seth leaves? You’ll be an empty nester. He’s your only one, isn’t he?”

  Hilary hated that term, “empty nester.” It had been coming up way too often lately. “I will be.” A bell tinkled above the door as another customer arrived. Hilary took one step toward the door. “I’ll be fine, though. I’ll get through it.”

  “You sound like you’ve been saying that a lot lately.”

  “I have.” At the compassion in Patty Winkler’s eyes Hilary decided to confide the rest. “Mostly to myself.”

  The woman hesitated as if she wanted to say something more. “I have to tell you —” she started, but then stopped.

  “What?”

  “Seth’s final essay. Did you get a chance to read it?”

/>   Hilary thought back. “No. Actually, I didn’t.”

  “Well, I have to tell you how much I admire you. With everything you’ve dealt with, the divorce, keeping Seth’s world so even. And now, agreeing to spend quality time with Eric for Seth’s graduation.”

  Hilary was confused. Why would a teacher think it unusual for a father, albeit an absent one, to attend commencement exercises? She narrowed her eyes, trying to figure out what Mrs. Winkler could be talking about.

  “It’s the first time I’ve ever heard of something like this, divorced parents willing to take a trip together with their son. It’s such a great gift for Seth. Such a confirmation for him that you both do love him. He wrote an excellent paper about it.”

  Hilary’s stomach took a dive. “But we’re not —”

  “It says so much about your family, that you as a couple would put aside your differences for him.”

  There had been times since the divorce when Hilary had known Seth to lie. Occasionally she had challenged him on it. Other times, she had let it go, deciding it wasn’t worth a confrontation. Seth had been through so much stress, after all. And when he’d fudged the truth a bit, it had always been a tactic to get more freedom, which was normal for a kid, wasn’t it? Saying he’d spent the night one place when she’d found he’d really been at another.

  But was this what Seth had been telling everyone he was getting as a graduation gift? Her and Eric together on a trip? Hilary wasn’t usually at a loss for words, but she felt like her tongue had been skewered.

  When Hilary closed her eyes, she could still see the tears pooling in Seth’s eyes as he’d asked her why she and his dad couldn’t stay together anymore. She could still see the dark confusion in Seth’s face those first months as he’d condemned himself for his parents’ mistakes.

  And wasn’t that what Hilary had done, too, as she’d moved through the stages of pain and guilt? Had she noticed Eric spending more hours at the office but chosen not to speak? Had she ignored her intuition? Hoped things would fix themselves?

  In the reeling aftermath of the divorce, how easily she’d condemned herself for her husband’s mistakes! But six years had passed and she’d gained perspective. Her friends, especially Gina, had bolstered her by pointing out that the blame for the divorce lay almost entirely on Eric. Hilary wasn’t the one who’d an affair! She didn’t decide to marry someone else. She didn’t decide she didn’t love her husband anymore.

  She launched herself into full lecture mode. Don’t go there, Hilary, she reminded herself. Don’t walk down a road already traveled. But the flowers in her arms suddenly smelled so sweet, so wrong, that she wanted to give them away. Every direction she turned today, she second-guessed herself again. “Has Seth told anyone else about this?” she asked her son’s teacher.

  “As far as I know, he only mentioned it in the essay. A trip down the Grand Canyon in a raft. It sounds like such fun.” Patty Winkler smiled her admiration. “I hope you don’t mind that I shared it with a few others at the school. I told him I’d wring his neck if he didn’t keep a journal. What an experience!”

  Hilary stood speechless. Had Seth thought this was a fiction project or something? If she told the teacher it wasn’t true, then she’d be telling her that Seth was a liar. And the three of them had already gone through so many levels of sadness and anger and guilt, they’d made so many apologies to one another, nothing was black and white anymore; they balanced on an edge, living in the shades of gray of survival that the teacher might not understand.

  “I’m going to miss having him as a student,” Mrs. Winkler said. “Seth’s a great kid.”

  Hilary handed the teacher the vase of flowers she’d just purchased. Really, she sort of shoved them against the woman’s blouse buttons so she had no choice but to grab them before they fell.

  “Oh no,” Patty said. “I couldn’t, Hilary. Weren’t these for you? They’re so pretty.”

  “Thank you for saying that. That my son is a great kid,” Hilary said. “I think so, too. Please. Enjoy the flowers.”

  Hilary left Patty Winkler standing in the middle of the shop, hugging the vase. When she stepped outside she could smell rain. The clouds moved across the sky as the wind whipped up, seeming to chase her.

  Of course, she would always be able to trust Seth.

  Yet Hilary knew firsthand how quickly a relationship between two people could unravel. She couldn’t shake this uneasiness that followed her. She wondered, like all parents do, if her son could ever become someone she didn’t know.

  Driving the rental car in from O’Hare, Eric couldn’t help but compare his Chicago birthplace to the gleaming, sunlit freeways he’d just left in L.A. Where the California breezes seemed to always be sweeping the clouds out to sea, the Illinois horizon seemed to always be tainted by them, greenish gray and ominous even this time of year, roiling overhead like the seaweed that littered the lakeshore.

  In L.A., everything glittered. The bright light could leave a person dazed. Churches made of glass throbbing in the sun. Gleaming ribbons of road leading from the latest open-air shopping promenade to the megaplex theater. And the surprise of palm trees arrowing into the sky.

  Everything in Chicago was gritty, built from bricks or huge blocks of quarried limestone, two centuries of determination woven throughout the deep roots of hackberry, maples, ironwood trees.

  Today Eric couldn’t help but feel like he might be returning to a place inside himself that he didn’t want to see.

  “Don’t miss your exit,” Pam was saying, navigating from the road map even though they’d paid extra for a GPS unit at the rental counter. “You’ll take the next one to get to the house.” Then, “Lily, stop bothering your brother. Leave his basketball alone.”

  “Mom, it’s taking up my whole seat.”

  “In fifty feet, exit to the right,” said the GPS navigator. By the way Pamela had insisted on renting the navigation system, you’d think she had forgotten how well he knew this city. And maybe he didn’t blame her so much, considering. Except for a couple of stilted visits to his family’s place at Christmastime, Eric had been perfectly willing to pay for Seth’s commute to LAX so they could have their regular schedule of visitation suggested by the court. Eric told himself that he’d been totally satisfied to see his son bounding out of the Jetway with a stewardess in tow and the plastic tags around his neck to show he was a minor traveling alone.

  Eric felt like he’d been gone from this place a long time.

  He felt like he’d left only yesterday.

  “At the next intersection, turn left,” the navigator said.

  Had he subconsciously let the novelty of Disneyland and the beach and the Santa Clarita skate park fill up his and Seth’s time so Eric, too, wouldn’t have to think of what he’d left behind him? Had he relied on an amusement park to make up for their stilted conversations? The dashing waves to fill silences that might have contained questions from his son: Don’t you love Mom anymore, Dad? Why did you decide to leave us? Questions that Eric didn’t want to answer.

  You’re handling this so well, Eric always said instead of answering him. You’re growing up so fast. You’re so strong about what’s happened between your mom and me. It makes me proud of you.

  Now, in the car, Pam laid a hand on Eric’s knee as if she knew what he was thinking. “We’ll get through it, Eric. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  He turned and smiled at her. “Yes. It will.”

  “It’s his graduation. We’ll be glad we did this.”

  He breathed deep and tried to relax his shoulders. It didn’t work.

  She reached across and massaged his neck. “It’s understandable, you being so tense. Don’t apologize.”

  “Are you tense? How come?” Ben bounced his basketball against the seat in front of him.

  “No.”

  “Are we there yet?” Lily asked.

  “You two stop asking questions,” Pam said. “Ben. Hold the ball still or you won’t get to
bring it next time. Lily, your dad is trying to drive.”

  A bell rang. The navigation system told him to take a “slight right.” He was passing landmarks he recognized, a day-care center Seth had once attended, a pizza place he and Seth had once frequented after Cubs games.

  That moment, Eric wished he hadn’t taken this exit into his old life. He wanted to keep driving in any direction — Indiana, New York, Canada, whichever direction the rental car would take him. He wanted the navigation system turned off.

  Pam’s fingers kneaded his neck. “You okay?”

  He didn’t answer that question. “I think we need to stop first. We don’t know how long the visit at the house is going to take us. I think we need to take care of the… gift.”

  “No,” Pam said. “It won’t work if we do it now. Let’s get the visit at the house over with. We’ll take care of the other on the way to the hotel.” And when she explained the logistics, he saw her point.

  “Okay,” he agreed. “House first.”

  “House first!” Lily sang.

  “Seth told me he’d shoot hoops with me when we got here,” Ben said.

  “Daddy?” Lily asked in little-girl innocence. “When I graduate from high school do I get a present like Seth’s?”

  “Why would you care about that?” Pam asked their daughter. “You’re only five.”

  Eric told her in all honesty, “You’ll get something else. Something especially for you.” He didn’t say the rest of it: You’ll get a graduation gift that’s reasonable. But this was for Seth. Because, with Seth, he had so much to make up for.

  Chapter 4

  The doorbell rang three times in quick succession. All of Hilary’s good intentions flew out of her head; she was a bundle of nerves. She peered out the peephole as she scrubbed her palms on her slacks legs.

  The glass in the peephole made everything on the porch look compressed, as if she were peering down on them from a bigger world. How it pleased her that her ex-husband appeared somewhat small.