American Wife

by Curtis Sittenfeld

  When he’d rolled the condom on, he straddled my waist and lowered his body down and thrust into me again, and he murmured, “I can’t believe anything that feels this good is legal,” and I said, “I’m really happy you’re here right now,” and he groaned against my neck. He came a few minutes later, collapsing onto me, and we both were quiet, I hugged him without speaking, and after a few more minutes, he lifted his head so we could see each other and said, “I meant to hold on a little longer, but you’re this goddess with these amazing, luscious breasts—”

  “Charlie.” This was the first moment of the evening I did feel embarrassment.

  “Do you not know that you have luscious breasts?”

  I clamped my hand over his mouth.

  When he pulled my hand off, he said, “Now your turn. I’m a rightie, so for maximum dexterity, it’s better if I go this way.” He nodded left with his chin and rolled off me.

  “You don’t have to,” I said.

  “Alice, I aim for total customer satisfaction.”

  “I’m not sure—I just don’t—”

  “You’ve had an orgasm before, haven’t you? It’s fine if you haven’t, although if that’s the case, you’ve been seriously shortchanged.”

  “No, I have,” I said. “Just not, you know, every time.”

  “That’s unacceptable. It’s a simple biological function.”

  “Aren’t you enlightened.”

  “Hey, I’ve read Fear of Flying. I know all about the zipless you-know-what.”

  “I appreciate—” I hesitated. How long I took had become an issue toward the end of my relationship with Simon; sometimes he’d given up. “I’m glad you want to try,” I said. “But I’m afraid it might not work, and I don’t want to spoil what’s been a really fun evening.”

  “Clearly, you have no idea how talented I am in this department.”

  I turned my head so we were making full eye contact. “Not tonight.”

  He drew his eyebrows together. “I don’t understand how someone can turn down the—”

  “Charlie, I don’t feel like it,” I said, and I knew there was an edge in my voice.

  Neither of us spoke until he said tentatively, “Want to hear the other information I’ve gathered for your dossier?”

  We had been under a spell, and the spell had broken. I didn’t want to be cold to him, but I also didn’t want to feign merriment. I said, “Maybe later.”

  “No, it’s all positive. I’ve been updating my file over the course of the night.” His voice was warm and conciliatory. “I’ll start at the beginning: Alice Marie Lindgren, born April 6, 1946. Beloved only daughter of Phillip and Dorothy, granddaughter of—hmm—You might need to give me a hint.”

  “Emilie.” I made sure to sound nicer, too—if he was trying, so could

  I. Also, I was surprised and flattered to hear him reciting these facts. Although I had revealed them during the hours we’d spent lying on the couch in my living room the previous Saturday night, I hadn’t expected he’d remember, partly because he’d been drinking and partly because we’d been talking idly.

  “Honor-roll student and all-around good girl,” he continued. “What religion are you, by the way?”

  “My family is Lutheran, but I only go to church when I’m with them.”

  “You don’t go to church? Mon dieu, I was bedded by an atheist!”

  “Oh, please,” I said, and Charlie snuggled in to me.

  “Moving on. University of Wisconsin class of 1968—summa cum laude?”

  I shook my head. “Magna, but given that you’re the one who went to Princeton, I’m not sure why you think I’m so smart.”

  He grinned. “Let’s just say I wasn’t known around campus for my straight A’s. Luckily, this is about you, not me. After college, you teach third grade at—Give me a little help on this one, too.”

  “Harrison Elementary,” I said. “But I doubt I told you before, so I won’t deduct points.”

  “Frequent reader of The Giving Tree, equally frequent crier. No, I’m teasing—I took a look at it, and I see why you’re a fan. And not too many big words for a knucklehead like me.” He’d sought out The Giving Tree in the three days since we’d seen each other last? I was astonished. (Later it emerged that he hadn’t actually bought it, he’d read the whole thing standing in the bookstore—but still.)

  “Then a master’s back at UW,” he was saying, “then Theodora Liess Elementary, where our heroine presently remains, dazzling children during the school year with her charm and good looks and spending the summers constructing large, brightly colored cardboard animals.”

  “Papier-mâché, but that was very impressive overall.”

  “Wait, there’s one more entry in the dossier.” He squinted at his palm, pretending to read. “ ‘Now being wooed by a strapping young politico. Doesn’t know it yet but is about to fall madly in love.’ ”

  “Oh, really? Is that what it says?” I grabbed for his hand, and he pulled it away.

  “These are classified documents, Miss Lindgren, and you don’t have clearance.” He turned and kissed me on the lips, and at first the kiss was a distraction, and then it was what both of us were paying all our attention to, the push and retreat of each other’s mouths.

  Charlie was wrong, though; I did know, I knew already, that I was falling in love.

  I MET DENA at her store. I was the one who’d suggested lunch, thinking I could get my confession over with, that by the time we saw each other that evening for our belated ratatouille, this conversation would be finished and behind us, but I realized as soon as I walked into D’s that I’d made a mistake. The store was crowded with customers, and Dena was buzzing with a tense, pleased preoccupation. As we left, she said to the girl behind the counter, “If Joan Dorff doesn’t pick up the corduroy handbag by one, call her and say we can’t keep holding it.”

  We walked to a nearby sandwich place, and when we opened the menus, I said, “By the way, my treat.”

  “Shit, if I’d known, I’d have suggested the Gilded Rose. Are we celebrating your home ownership?”

  It seemed early in the lunch to bring up the real reason. But maybe I was worrying too much, maybe it would only be a brief awkwardness.

  Dena said, “Before I forget, I saw this great couch at Second Time Around that you should buy for your new living room. It’s three hundred bucks, but I know the owner, and I bet I can talk her down.”

  “Dena, I went on a date with Charlie Blackwell,” I said.

  Immediately, her eyes narrowed.

  I pressed on. “At the party, you said you didn’t really like him.” In fact, she had said she thought he didn’t like her, but the two weren’t so far off, and this seemed the more diplomatic version. “Obviously, this wasn’t my plan, but we just—I guess we clicked. I would have thought before I got to know him that you’d be more compatible, but it turns out—” I seemed to be losing traction. “Our friendship is so important to me, Dena, and that’s why I’m being honest. I realize that—”

  She cut me off. “You didn’t sleep with him, did you?”

  I hesitated.

  “You’ve got to be kidding.” She exhaled disgustedly. “It’s like me being interested in a guy automatically makes you interested. You’ve always been jealous.”

  “That’s not true at all.”

  “How do you explain it, then? Because this isn’t the first time.”

  Don’t say it, Dena, I thought. Please, for both of our sakes. I swallowed. “If I didn’t feel a true sense of connection with Charlie, I wouldn’t have let things progress. But when I’m with him—” It was impossible, I realized. I couldn’t justify my behavior without sounding like I was gloating.

  “What, are you planning to marry him?”

  “I don’t think it’s beyond the realm of possibility,” I said, and I suspect I was as surprised as Dena. Not that I wasn’t dimly, dimly aware of having considered it, but I would never have guessed I’d risk uttering the thought al
oud. Quickly, I added, “We’re still getting to know each other.”

  “Is it because he’s rich?”

  “Of course not! I’ve never even—We haven’t talked about money. I’m not sure he is that rich.”

  “He is,” Dena said. “He’s loaded.”

  “His family, maybe, but—”

  “No.” Her voice was flat. “Him. All of them.”

  The waitress approached, and Dena held up her palm. “I’m not staying.” The waitress looked at me.

  “Give us a minute?” I said, and she nodded and walked away. “Dena, don’t leave. Or leave if you feel like you need to, but please let’s not have this be some ugly thing between us. You’re my closest friend.”

  She was shaking her head. “Once you’ve been divorced, you know that walking away from a marriage is a lot harder than walking away from a friendship.”

  “But I’ve known you longer than Dick did,” I said, which sounded slightly pathetic even to my own ears.

  “The last time you pulled this crap, we were teenagers, and what did we know about anything?” Dena said. “But we’re adults, which means this is who you really are—a person who goes after the man your best friend is interested in.” I almost wished she were ranting, but she hadn’t raised her voice at all. “I’m sick of your fakeness,” she said. “You’ve always gotten to be the good girl, so go be a congressman’s wife, you know? Spend all your time with the Trommlers and the Hickens and those other uptight couples. Let Charlie buy you jewelry and cars.” Though we’d never ordered, we both had set our napkins on our laps; she crumpled hers, dropped it on the table, and stood. “I hope he gives you everything you want.”

  Sitting there after she left, I felt a mild embarrassment at having been abandoned, and also an incredulity at how extreme her reaction had been; it was what I’d feared but hadn’t really expected. And then, less close to the surface than these emotions but perhaps more profound, I felt one more: a great gratitude that she, like Pete Imhof, had never mentioned Andrew by name.

  ON MY NEXT visit to Riley, I didn’t tell my mother or grandmother that I wouldn’t be staying over until we were nearly finished with lunch. With as little fanfare as possible, I said, “I made some plans in Madison tonight, so I think I’ll take off this afternoon.” It was a hot Saturday, and we had just finished chicken-salad sandwiches.

  “Really, this afternoon?” my mother said, and my grandmother said, “What sort of plans?” Since my father’s death, I had never come home without spending the night.

  I gave my grandmother a look—presumably, she could have guessed the plans involved Charlie, and she also could have guessed that if I wanted to be more specific, I would have—and I said, “Just some people getting together on the Terrace.” This, at least, was true: I’d be meeting a bunch of Charlie’s friends for the first time.

  When my mother rose to clear the plates, my grandmother gripped my wrist, holding me back. As soon as my mother was in the kitchen, my grandmother murmured, “She made a Vienna torte for dessert tonight on your account.”

  “Oh, I didn’t realize—No, I can stay then,” I said.

  My mother came back into the dining room, and my grandmother said, “Dorothy, it sounds like your daughter has a new beau.”

  “Oh my goodness.” It was my mother, not me, who blushed in this moment.

  “It’s not official yet.” I shot my grandmother an irritated look. “But his name is Charlie, he grew up in Madison and Milwaukee, and I met him through Kathleen Hicken and her husband, remember them?” Volunteering this information was a subterfuge, a way of not volunteering the more noteworthy details of Charlie’s upbringing or his current congressional aspirations. I was uncertain what my family’s reaction would be when I did share the news, given my father’s maxim about fools’ names and fools’ faces. Also, as I sat there, it occurred to me that I had no idea of my mother’s political leanings. I’d always known that my grandmother was a Democrat and my father a Republican, but I wasn’t sure my mother voted.

  My grandmother said, “A little companionship can be wonderful. Don’t you think, Dorothy?”

  My mother, still standing, lifted the iced-tea pitcher. “He sounds appealing, Alice,” she said, and she disappeared again into the kitchen. When she turned on the water, my grandmother whispered, “I was trying to give her an entrée to talk about Lars Enderstraisse.”

  “Granny, I really doubt they’re involved.” I, too, was whispering. “Whatever Mom’s mystery errands are, I’m pretty sure they don’t have to do with him.”

  “You think you’re the only one being wooed?” My grandmother chuckled, and, speaking at a normal volume, said, “Someone has an awfully high opinion of herself.”

  MY GRANDMOTHER AND I read in the living room that afternoon, she on the couch and I in the chair, and when I went to find my mother, she was weeding tomato plants in the backyard.

  “If it’s all right, I think I will stay for dinner,” I said. “My friends aren’t meeting until around nine o’clock.” This was a lie, but my mother’s face lit up.

  “Oh, I’m delighted. We’re having a dessert I know you like.”

  Watching her—she was on her knees, wearing a white terry-cloth hat—I felt colliding surges of affection and guilt. Why had I not told Charlie from the start that I wouldn’t be free tonight? Our schedules were flexible, we could go out during the upcoming week. But the truth was that I didn’t want to stay in Riley. The pulls of familial love and obligation could not, for the moment, compete with the promise of early-relationship sex. Starlight and beer and our twisting, naked bodies—that was what I wanted, not a seat at a dining room table with two old women eating breaded veal cutlets and Vienna torte. If infatuation was making me selfish, it was not, I supposed, that I’d previously been exempt from a capacity for it; it was more that I hadn’t ever been infatuated, or at least not in a good long time.

  I squatted next to her. “The tomatoes look nice.”

  My mother set a bunch of weeds on the pile. “Honey, Dena must have told you about Marjorie. Lillian is having a fit.”

  I tried to make a noncommittal expression. Of course Dena hadn’t told me about Marjorie, who was one of her two younger sisters.

  “You know how that family is, though,” my mother said. “The girls have always been so strong-willed. Mack could be such a disciplinarian, Lillian compensated by being lenient, and it was feast or famine for the girls.” The last I’d heard of Marjorie Janaszewski, she’d gotten involved with David Geisseler, the younger brother of our former classmate Pauline Geisseler; David already had two children with a woman whom he hadn’t married, and he and Marjorie were bartenders together at the Loose Caboose on Burlington Street. “I can’t fault Lillian for worrying, though,” my mother said.

  All this time I had been carrying an envelope—it was unsealed, unwritten on—and I held it out to my mother. “That was a good idea about selling the brooch,” I said. “I took it to an antiques store.”

  “Oh, bless your heart.” Without looking inside, she folded the envelope and inserted it in the pocket of her skirt.

  I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying Be careful with that. The closest I came, straining to sound casual, was “It turns out it was pretty valuable.”

  “That’s wonderful,” she said vaguely. “Alice, I was having some trouble with hornworms feeding on the tomatoes, and Mrs. Falke told me to plant marigolds, and they’ve worked beautifully. Mrs. Falke’s very modest, but she has quite a green thumb.”

  I closed my eyes, and briefly, the house on McKinley, the porch and the window seats and the secret cupboard, appeared in my mind, but then I opened my eyes, and my mother was pulling weeds from the soil, my steadfast and kindhearted mother in her white terry-cloth hat, and the house went away. The check was for seventy-one hundred dollars—a great deal less than my mother had given to Pete Imhof, and exactly the amount I’d have put toward a down payment.

  IT WAS AFTER midnight by the time Charl
ie and I left the Terrace. His friends, it turned out, were a lot like the crowd at the Hickens’ barbecue, and in fact there was some overlap: Will Werden, who was Frank Werden’s first cousin, was there with his wife, Gayle, and as soon as Charlie introduced me to everyone two of the other women and I realized we’d met a few years before at a baby shower. Ten of us were there in total, all couples, and the other couples all were married except for Charlie’s stockbroker friend Howard and his girlfriend, Petal, a twenty-one-year-old who’d graduated from the university two months before. “How long ago do you think she made that name up?” one of the baby-shower women—her own name was Anne—whispered to me, rolling her eyes. “We don’t know where Howard gets them.” This was an extension of friendship on Anne’s part that I gratefully accepted, though later, I talked to Petal (it wasn’t her fault that she was a decade younger than the rest of us), and she was perfectly intelligent; she’d double-majored in art history and Italian. At the end of the night, Anne pulled me aside and said, “Charlie is smitten with you.” I laughed, because it was easier than saying anything. Even Will Werden nudged me at one point and said, “I didn’t know you and Blackwell there were an item.” Again,I only smiled.

  There’d been a bit of shifting over the course of the night, people getting up to use the restroom or the parents in the group checking in by pay phone with their babysitters, but most of the time Charlie and I had sat side by side, and even when we were both talking to other people, I felt his attention: his hand on my knee or at the small of my back, the quickness with which he’d turn if I said his name or tapped his arm. Every so often he’d lean in and say, “You okay?” Or “Hanging in there?” It was probably seventy degrees, a perfect summer night, and Lake Mendota was mostly blackness with a few wavering reflected lights.