My Husband's Wives

by Faith Hogan

  By the time Paul arrived, mother and baby were being treated for shock. The enormity of what might have been crept up on Grace as that silent dread she’d been expecting. They kept Delilah overnight; Grace never left her side; and while the baby’s condition was thoroughly monitored, so too was Grace’s story. With each retelling, it sounded worse to her. The way they observed her was enough to dig a chasm deep inside her of something that she identified first as embarrassment, but later as guilt. Of course, she knew it then. This was the kind of guilt that would never leave her. When, eventually, they let her hold Delilah, she knew, she’d never let her daughter go again. And so it had been.

  Paul found the aquamarine paint about a month later. Grace put it in the bin. Funny, but these days she didn’t particularly care if she never painted again. She could feel Paul watch her, this newfound obsession with the baby – the world began to turn again, and suddenly, Paul had slipped aside and he was looking in.

  *

  ‘Hormones,’ Patrick said, although he was relieved when she arrived back to work on that first day after dropping Delilah at a nearby nursery. Grace had been surprised at how little motivation she had for the work that had consumed her so wholly before Delilah’s arrival. It had taken all her willpower not to ring or text the nursery, or pick her up early.

  ‘We’ll have to make a lot more money from here on in,’ she joked. ‘The nursery fees are through the roof.’ Her work took on a gentler feel. Perhaps some of the depth of her father’s hand was beginning to emerge. She viewed her new work with growing warmth, working steadily, allowing the brush to lead her where it would. Within the year, she had amassed a sizeable collection once more.

  ‘Enough for another show?’ Patrick asked when he called one day. He was in love again. ‘Maybe there’ll be wedding bells?’ he said, and she had a feeling he was only half-joking.

  ‘Another show,’ she turned the conversation back. It was what she needed, something to bring her back to where she was before, to who she was before. ‘You tell me. I have the quantity, there’s no doubt about that. It’s whether any of them are good enough; that’s what you’ll have to decide.’

  ‘I’m putting a show together for New York – would you be interested?’ He considered again the canvas before him. ‘They’re all good, by the way, every one of them. Of course, some I personally prefer more than others.’ He pointed towards a small portrait of Delilah. She was a cherub with dark curls that sat halo-like about her head, and skin so white it had taken Grace a week to get the colour right. But it was her eyes that manifested her delight upon the canvas. They held in their depths contagious pleasure that reaffirmed for Grace that everything had turned out exactly as it should. ‘You’ve easily got enough to fill an exhibition here, but I think, if I took ten, maybe twenty, brought them to New York, well, it might be just the thing to launch you over there…’

  ‘God, Patrick, do you realize how long I’ve hoped for this chance?’ She bit her lip a little nervously.

  ‘It’s to coincide with St. Patrick’s Day, a trade mission, highlighting the best we have. You’ll be packed in there with Bono and Waterford Crystal overflowing with shamrock and enough Newbridge Silverware to build a bridge from here to Hong Kong – in other words, don’t get too excited.’ He smiled. ‘You’ll be a very small fish in a big pond.’

  Grace filled the next few weeks with framing and naming. In the end, Patrick took thirty paintings to the States.

  The phone call woke Delilah at almost three in the morning. Grace answered it groggily to the background sound of traffic and a lilting, elated Patrick. ‘They’ve taken the lot, they’ve bloody taken everything I brought over,’ he whooped.

  ‘Are you all right Patrick? Have you any idea what time it is… here?’ It began to register that he was still in New York.

  ‘They’re only the most reputable gallery in Manhattan.’ He sounded giddy with excitement. ‘Browne Holt have just taken thirty of your paintings, woman. You are the hot ticket over here this week.’

  Suddenly she grasped the meaning of his words, the enormity. She shrieked with delight and danced a thrilled Delilah about the house. Good thing Paul was on night duty or she’d have woken him too.

  It was the break she’d always craved and a little bit of her worried that you can’t have it all. Can you?

  *

  Paul’s reaction, when she mentioned going on the pill, just before Delilah’s first birthday, had surprised her. ‘Why?’ he sounded puzzled. ‘Why would you do that, when there are people who’d give everything they have for the chance to have children?’

  ‘I’m happy with how things are,’ she said, her eyes downcast. She didn’t want to see the pain she could hear in his voice. She loved Delilah more than life itself; they were complete as they were. ‘And there’s my work. My career is really taking off.’

  ‘Well, okay, but in a while, maybe next year?’ His voice petered out.

  She never mentioned that she was still taking the pill on Delilah’s fifth, sixth, and seventh birthdays. It was just after they’d taken a week off to go to Connemara, where they celebrated Delilah’s eight birthday, and she’d slept late on their last morning, that it came up again. Paul had set about packing up their bags, letting Grace enjoy the late morning lie-in. He gathered up their belongings from around the cottage they’d rented overlooking the Atlantic. She wasn’t sure how long he’d been sitting on the side of her bed when she woke. She found herself wide awake after one glimpse of the dark expression on his face. In that first moment, she was sure something terrible had happened to Delilah.

  ‘What is it, Paul, tell me what is it?’ She pulled herself up in one movement from lying in a foetal ball to a full sitting position. ‘What’s wrong, what’s happened?’ His expression gave nothing away; countless unmasked but unreadable emotions flashed across his eyes. She put her hands on his shoulders; perhaps if she shook him, she could make the words tumble from his closed mouth. ‘Is Delilah okay?’

  For an awful second, she considered not finding out what he had to tell her. She studied his long narrow hand, so familiar, yet it gave her no comfort. His eyes never left her face. The scrutiny was too much and she looked away, her eyes drawn to his outstretched hand. Her monthly prescription, the small pink tray of tablets cut carefully into groups of twos so she could fit them easily into the delicate powder box that never usually left her bag.

  ‘You’ve been taking them. All this time?’ He shook his head, as though it were the end of everything. Their years together came crumbling apart as easily as a badly built wall with rotten foundations. ‘I thought we were just unlucky, that perhaps, work, you know, the fact that there are times when we can’t be together, stress, whatever.’ A bitter movement curled his lips, as if he’d swallowed something foul. His voice, she’d remember later, never went above a whisper – he didn’t want Delilah to hear.

  ‘I…’ Words deserted her. She was at a disadvantage. He knew she’d gone out of her way to make sure he didn’t know she was taking contraceptives. ‘It’s the twenty-first century, Paul. We women get to choose if we have children. I told you, a long time ago, I wanted to concentrate on my career…’

  ‘Your career? How much more do you want, Grace? You’re the most successful Irish painter alive. Your work is hanging in the most famous galleries in the world. It’s not the money. It doesn’t mean that much to you. So what is it? Art for art’s sake? Do you want to end up like your father?’ He wiped a stream of wet tears from his cheeks and she felt a swell of desperation deep inside her. Paul was much too strong to cry; she knew that this had cut him to the core and it only added to her despair. ‘I really want to understand you. Is this it? Is this all you want, when we could have so much more?’

  ‘Time, just a little more…’ She kept her voice even, but inside the only thought echoing about her head was ‘what have I done?’

  ‘Don’t you see? You don’t have time. Grace, you don’t need to be a doctor to work out that you�
��re heading straight towards the menopause. Hadn’t you noticed? Time isn’t on our side here; you’ve thrown away not only your chances, but mine too. Didn’t you think I might like to know you’d taken that choice from me?’

  ‘It’s my decision,’ she said. She’d made it before she met him. She hadn’t reckoned on the impact on Paul. What had gone on before with Evie? She hadn’t counted on his unfailing loyalty to the memory of their marriage, his inability to open up any further than to lay the blame of its demise on the doorstep of procreation. Did she have a self-destruction wish? Later, when it was far too late to make any difference, she’d think back to this time. To the rows they should have had, if she’d given him the chance.

  They returned to Dublin a subdued bunch after what had otherwise been a happy break away. Delilah seemed to sink into a matching melancholy, although Grace was sure she couldn’t have realized what had passed between them.

  It was with even greater vigour that Grace plunged herself into work. She was producing a series of watercolours inspired by the fall of the Celtic tiger. She wanted to catalogue the small hopeful signs among the broken dreams. They were simple studies, a child at play, a group of teenagers on Grafton Street, two old men sharing a newspaper. Something about each of the subjects gave rise to optimism. A little hope was what she so desperately needed, and maybe, briefly, she found it in strangers’ eyes on the city streets. It seemed that, when Delilah was not the centre of their lives, what went on between Paul and Grace was as empty as her womb. She thought about giving up the pill, of course she did. Then she knew, she loved Delilah, but she did not want to go through it all again. She counted herself so lucky that Patrick’s blue paint had pulled her back from a deep empty hole and she couldn’t take that chance again. Paul threw himself as deeply into his work as Grace did into hers and on many nights she sat alone at their kitchen table finishing off a bottle of Chardonnay. Once Delilah fell asleep, there was just Grace, her glass of wine and the phone that never rang.

  *

  The end, when it came, came quickly. ‘No point beating about the bush,’ he said, though he hardly met her eyes. ‘I’ve met someone.’ He didn’t want to hurt her, she could see that. ‘It’s nothing like what we have, what we’ve shared.’ He walked towards the window, pulled the open bottle of wine from the fridge, poured a generous measure. ‘I don’t feel the same about her…’ He stopped, knew he’d have to give her a name; she was moving into all their lives after all. ‘Annalise. It just happened. I’m so sorry and well…’ He exhaled deeply, as though he could just breathe the whole thing away and everything would be all right. Of course, it wouldn’t; it would never be the same again. ‘She’s – I mean – we’re pregnant. She’s four months gone. We didn’t realize it until…’

  ‘I really don’t want to hear this.’ The words fell as dried autumn leaves from her mouth. Grace shook her head. If only… and for a minute she actually thought this, if only it was me. If only Grace was four months pregnant with his child. Amazing, the clarity that comes with hindsight.

  ‘I don’t want you to think that she could ever replace you. You still mean the world to me. Grace, she’s nothing like you. She needs me; I have to be there for her. It’s one of those stupid things that just happened. I wish…’

  ‘Please, don’t say it.’ The thought danced tantalizingly about her brain. This was all her doing; Grace felt she had no one to blame but herself.

  ‘I’ll always be here for you. You need only ask, and I’ll drop everything and come running for you. We still have Delilah of course, and I promise I’ll try to keep things easy for her too.’

  When he walked out the door, maybe that was the worst part. She had the sense that he took her future with him. Suddenly she was the same as Evie. A mistake in the past, one he probably wouldn’t mention much. Maybe he’d be loyal and not tell the new one what had happened in the end. At least for that, she might be glad. They’d still see each other, not like Paul and Evie. He had to see Delilah – she was his; she was what he’d wanted. Grace prayed that it wasn’t all he’d wanted from her.

  2012

  Funny, they say that when one door closes another opens. That didn’t happen for Grace. She could blame it on the menopause, but she was still waiting for it to hit. She could blame the bottle of wine she had grown too fond of having every evening after Delilah went to bed. Or she could blame the antidepressants she stored in her little compact case instead of the contraceptive pill. There had been no need for the pill since Paul left. But along with losing Paul, the work had dried up too.

  She’d produced nothing she was proud of since he left. Her work was all dark, stealthily carrying in it the silence of her soul. Patrick was still moving them on, a series of twelve she called ‘Anger’ sold for seven figures to a nightclub chain – they were hanging in millionaire boys’ clubs in Miami, Monte Carlo and the Bahamas. Delilah was her world and Grace knew, when she saw other mothers, that she was lucky. They lived contented lives together, apart from Paul’s departure, and their home was happy. Delilah finished primary school and they managed to get on with things. Paul called to pick up Delilah every weekend. He was true to his word; he dropped by most days. He was either putting up shelves or checking the oil, still maintaining his role as the man about the house. When he called, he still wore the wedding ring Grace had given him all those years ago. They settled into a life that sometimes felt balanced on a tight wire. Annalise, it turned out, was only twenty-something. She was a Miss Ireland with ovaries just bursting to accommodate Paul’s wish for more children. Their first was born on its due date, a boy, bonny and bouncing, and that was all they heard of him. Paul never quite summoned up the courage to cross the divide and tell Delilah enough about his new life for her to become part of it. It was something Grace was thankful for and Delilah never spoke about. When Paul told her Annalise was pregnant with their second child it was as though he had opened up her wounds afresh.

  ‘I’m happy for you,’ Grace lied, but she knew it was a white lie. In time, it would be the truth. How can you not wish the man you love most in the whole world well; how can you not wish him all the happiness they deserve?

  ‘Are you, are you really?’

  ‘Of course.’ Grace nodded. ‘Of course I’m happy for you.’ She reached out and touched his hand, only for a second. She couldn’t trust herself for any longer than that. What had she expected? He and Annalise were living together after all. Mostly, when he was with Grace and Delilah, it was as if nothing had changed much. Grace could forget that he had another life somewhere with a young woman whom he still did not feel the need to marry. At odd moments, she found herself grateful for that at least.

  ‘I’m glad; I wouldn’t want to hurt you.’ His face broke into a beaming smile. ‘I’m so happy,’ he said just as Delilah walked into the room.

  ‘Why are you so pleased with yourself?’ she asked, and for a moment, emotion whipped Grace into silence. She wanted to cry for both of them. Of course, she couldn’t.

  2016

  Some moments stay with you forever. The day Evie Considine knocked on her door would be one of those that would not fade from Grace’s memory easily, or ever. It was a warm day. They had planned a picnic the evening before, just Delilah and herself.

  Delilah left Evie standing in the doorway, as unsure where to put her as Grace was about how to welcome this familiar stranger to their home.

  ‘Hello,’ Grace said. Her voice held a little trepidation. Why do you always have a fair idea when you are about to hear bad news?

  ‘Hello – we’ve never actually met, Grace, but my name is Evie. Evie Considine-Starr.’ She was an icy grey-blonde, coiffed and immaculately tailored. Her navy blue eyes were large and childlike beneath lids that hooded with age more than shrewdness. Her voice was porcelain, but softened by nerves. She held herself straight and might be formidable, but there was a little girl quality to her that picked out her vulnerability so she couldn’t hide it, even if she tried. She was absu
rdly overdressed for the weather and younger-looking than the sixty-five years she must surely be at this stage.

  Grace held out her hand. ‘It’s nice to meet you.’ They shared a handshake with no warmth. ‘What can I do for you?’ She reversed backwards into her hallway, feeling as if this perfectly prepared woman who had slipped silently about in her imagination for so long had caught her in the act of some sordid activity. She moved into the nearby dining room that they never used. She could feel Evie inspecting the place as they entered the room. ‘Have a seat.’ But she did not sit. This was not a social visit.

  ‘I’m here about Paul.’ Her voice was even, unemotional, but Grace knew it couldn’t be good news; she was a million miles off just how bad though. ‘He’s dead.’ Evie said the words with a finality that took all the air from the room between them.