SECRET LIVES OF SECOND WIVES
ALSO BY CATHERINE TODD
Exit Strategies
Making Waves
Staying Cool
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Although the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) handled “extraordinary ability alien” processing at the time this book was written and set, the organization ceased to exist as of March 1, 2003. The immigration matters referred to in the novel are now handled by the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, part of the Department of Homeland Security. As of this writing, service centers and district offices retain their current names and locations, but administration and policies are obviously subject to change.
SECRET LIVES OF SECOND WIVES
CATHERINE TODD
Copyright © 2003 by Catherine Todd.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from Don Congdon Associates, Inc.; the agency can be reached at [email protected].
Cover design by Kimberly Killion of The Killion Group, Inc.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
For Maxine and Art
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks to Krista Stroever for helping me with excellent suggestions for improving this book, to Carrie Feron and Erika Tsang for seeing it through to publication, and to Larry Ashmead for believing in my work.
Thanks, too, to all the terrific people at HarperCollins for their part in the production and publication of Secret Lives of Second Wives, including the production manager, Derek Gullino; my copy editor, Maureen Sugden; my publicist, Claire Greenspan; the jacket designer, Honi Werner; the sales and marketing departments; and the representatives on the road.
Finally, heartfelt thanks to my agent, Denise Marcil, for just about everything.
SECRET LIVES OF SECOND WIVES
1
What is the opposite of premonition? There are people who “know” things in advance, or say they do. I am not one of them. In fact, I frequently don’t “know” something even after it’s already happened. I’ve always suspected that a penchant for portent is another form of Looking for Trouble, a selfish sort of instinct for misery. Still, it’s hard to ignore people who are convinced something bad will happen, because life can change on you at a moment’s notice. You listen, but deep down you don’t really believe it.
All of which is a roundabout way of saying that when my well-ordered life started unraveling, despite ample hints and warnings, I didn’t have a clue.
“OSCAR WILDE WAS DEAD BY MY AGE,” Jack, my husband, said.
“So what?” I asked him, in what I hoped was an appropriately tender and sympathetic tone. “Your best years are still ahead.” We’d been having this conversation in some form or other ever since the invitation to join AARP had arrived six weeks in advance of his fiftieth birthday, an event transpiring that very day. He’d dropped the envelope with a startled gasp, as if the impending birthday were a dreadful surprise, even though I’d been planning the party for weeks.
I had more or less run out of reassurances after “Grandma Moses didn’t even start her best work until she was decades older than you” proved a flop.
“I feel like I’ve crossed over to the other side,” he muttered darkly.
I didn’t ask, Of what? “Oscar crossed over to the Other Side,” I pointed out. “You haven’t. You still have plenty of time for dissipation and frivolity. Want me to commission your portrait, Dorian?”
Normally this would elicit at least a rueful chuckle, but today he wasn’t having any of it. “Did you know Wilde was only forty-one when he wrote that book?” he asked.
I didn’t know. I was going to have to hide the Ellmann biography, at least until the party was over. I shook my head. “Do you think you could manage to enjoy yourself just a tiny bit this evening?”
Now he did smile, a little. “Sorry. Sure.” He brushed his hair back from his forehead with his fingertips, a gesture that made him look about fifteen and adorable. It had worked on me the first time we ever met. “I’m looking forward to it, honestly.”
It was my turn to smile. “Liar,” I said. Although he was far more gregarious than I was and the sort of person people gravitated to in a room, I’d discovered, belatedly, that he resisted being the center of attention, at least on this occasion.
He laughed. “Who wouldn’t want two hundred of his most intimate friends to witness the beginning of his slide into senescence?”
I wanted tonight to be a success. After our wedding reception, it was the biggest party we’d given together, and it was supposed to be, in addition to a tribute to Jack, a kind of public statement of our partnership as a couple. Jack was popular and successful, and a birthday bash had seemed just the thing to honor him. I thought he’d warmed to the idea. Now I wasn’t so sure.
“Maybe things did get a little out of hand with the guest list,” I admitted. “Do you really mind?”
He raised his eyebrows in mock seriousness. “You promise there won’t be any black balloons?”
“I promise.”
“Not a single ‘Over the Hill’ banner?”
I nodded.
“I want to hear it out loud. It’s binding that way.”
“Banter maybe, but no banners. I can’t control your friends,” I said.
“I can,” he said confidently. “Anyway, Lynn, the party is great. Really.” The easy smile faded. “I’m sorry if I’ve seemed unappreciative.”
“You haven’t,” I said. “I just want you to have fun. I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable.”
He shook his head. “It isn’t that. It’s just … there’s some stuff you don’t know.”
“Worse than turning fifty?” I asked lightly, despite the inevitable frisson a statement like that evoked.
He shrugged. “Probably not,” he said. “Never mind. We’ll talk about it later. Okay?” He touched my arm affectionately. “I’ll take my shower now, if you don’t need me to do anything.”
“No, that’s fine,” I told him. “Go ahead. I’ve called the hotel, and they seem to have everything under control.” I sounded, even to myself, like the perfect Second Wife. Never be importunate. Don’t push. Don’t cling. Do not, in short, remind him of her.
Which didn’t stop me thinking. Cancer. Heart disease. No, he didn’t sound worried enough, and besides, he’d just had his annual checkup. Not an affair either; we’d only been married a year, and he wouldn’t. Would he?
Something else, then. One of his children. My thoughts recoiled a little, withdrawing as they always did when they touched that topic. My stepchildren (if that’s the right word for two fully grown adults with whom I had a relati
onship primarily characterized by its complexity) were Off-Limits.
I checked my watch. Whatever the “stuff” I didn’t know was, it would have to wait. Maybe it was just the usual angst of acknowledging middle age, of swapping acid rock for acid reflux or discovering an unexpected enthusiasm for roughage. Nobody was immune. Certainly not me, although I had a few years to go before I reached the milestone birthday. Women notice earlier anyway.
Besides, with the hotel handling the arrangements and the guest list consisting of reasonably sociable, well-intentioned adults, how could our party fail? All we had to do was show up and smile.
“THERE MIGHT BE A PROBLEM,” the maître d’ said, in my ear. Only about a quarter of the guests had arrived, my stepchildren were nowhere to be seen, and I was just about to sample a particularly elegant and delicious-looking crab puff. I never met a crab I didn’t like.
“A problem?” I whispered back, catching the ominous tone. The puff stayed aloft, wedged between my fingers halfway to my mouth.
He nodded. “I’m afraid someone’s attempted to … ah, pop a car, and the truck is stuck in the garage.”
I looked at him without comprehension. “I beg your pardon?”
He affected a Gallic shrug, although he was no more French than I am. “Popped. You know. Repo Man,” he said urgently.
“You’re saying somebody tried to repossess a car in the hotel garage and the tow truck is stuck in the entrance or something like that?” I translated.
He nodded. I studied the puff. I couldn’t put it back, and if I bit into it my half of the conversation was likely to be severely limited. I grabbed a napkin and stuffed the hors d’oeuvre into the center.
A sudden, nasty thought occurred to me. “It’s not the car of one of our guests?” I asked.
“Very possibly,” he said. “I don’t know. I’m afraid there’s a rather … unpleasant scene. The hotel will sort it out,” he said, folding his arms in a classic gesture of denial, “but until the truck is removed, your guests will be unable to get into the garage. I thought you should know.”
Since this was Palo Alto—and not Manhattan—on a Saturday night, the parking problem didn’t worry me as much as it might have. The streets were not chockablock with revelers, and there was more than one municipal lot. On the other hand, while the technology-stock bust had stranded a lot of newly impoverished Silicon Valley—ites with unaffordable car payments, repossession was supposed to be a private matter, like changing your underwear. Most took place in company parking lots or in the early-morning hours. You woke up one day and your car wasn’t where it was the night before, like a visit from Santa Claus in reverse. After that, if anybody noticed that you were driving your wife’s ’95 Accord to work instead of the Lexus SUV, nobody would comment, much less gloat. Repossession meant failure, and failure, like the plague, might be contagious. The etiquette was to look the other way.
Still, it would be impossible to avert one’s eyes with a repo man blocking the entrance, so I decided we should probably see what we could do to spare any of our guests the embarrassment. I didn’t even want to speculate as to who it might be.
I looked around the room for Jack. “Have you seen my husband?” I asked the maître d’.
“I’m afraid not,” he said.
“Okay,” I said. “Then I’ll go downstairs to the garage. When you see him, would you ask him to join me?”
I almost expected him to say, “Certainly, madam,” but what he said was, “Yeah, okay.”
THE GARAGE SMELLED LIKE EXPENSIVE GASOLINE.
“Repo Man” was about twenty-five and skinny, with an impressive collection of metallic facial adornments. “Oh, puhleeze,” he was saying to another man, who was clinging to the driver’s-side door of a BMW 74OiL as if it were the life raft in Cast Away. The metal jaws of some contraption under the car had turned outward to lift the front wheels, but the turn was too tight for the truck to exit with its prey in tow. “Give me a break.”
The driver was young, Asian, and looked near tears. “I’m this close to making the payment,” he said. “This close.” He made a gesture with the hand that wasn’t gripping the door handle. “Can’t you wait a few more days?”
“It’s not up to me,” said Repo Man. “I represent the legal owner. Which, unfortunately, is no longer you. Look,” he said, in a slightly softer tone, “the easiest way to resolve this is for you to just let me take the car. If I leave now without it, we can get a judgment against you and come out with the sheriff’s department. You don’t want that, do you?”
“You bloodsucker,” said the driver, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “Aren’t you ashamed? What did you ever do for anybody? I earned this car!”
“I’m not ashamed,” said Repo Man quietly. “My car is paid up. Old people, moms with kids—they make me feel bad. But you guys in high tech … Nah, I can sleep at night, no problem.”
The driver was no one I knew, and I was unlikely to be of use in extricating the truck, since I had never even learned to parallel-park. I turned to go back up the stairs.
“I want a lawyer,” the driver said.
“Oh, dude,” said Repo Man. “What for? That’s not going to do you any good. Your credit report sucks, you know that? It sucks.”
The driver opened the car door and threw himself across both front seats, a posture that the gearshift must have made fairly uncomfortable. “I’m not getting out of this car until I at least talk to one. This is Silicon Valley. There must be a lawyer here somewhere. If you want this car so bad, go find me one.”
“Oh, dude,” Repo Man said again. Behind him, cars lined up to get into the garage were starting to honk.
I hitched up my velvet skirt so I wouldn’t step on the hem navigating the stairs. I turned. “I’m a lawyer,” I said, moving from the shadows into the bright fluorescent light.
This revelation generally has an effect similar to that of announcing “I’m a piranha” in a swimming pool. In this case, however, both of them looked at me with relief, particularly Repo Man, who believed, correctly, that the law was on his side. Neither of them appeared to question the theatrical emergence on cue of legal counsel dressed in formal attire and apparently given to lurking in dimly lit garages waiting for a summons. I give you the times.
They both started to speak at once. “Tell him—” “Can he do this?”
I looked at the driver, still sprawled over the palomino leather seats. “Are you behind in the payments?”
Repo Man rolled his eyes.
“Yeah,” the kid said. “A couple of months.”
“Seven months,” Repo Man said.
“Well…,” I began.
“It’s on private property,” the kid said. “Aren’t there laws against trespassing or something like that?”
“Look,” I said, “I’m on shaky ground here. I’m not that kind of attorney. But I think it’s okay to repossess on private property that isn’t gated or locked.”
Repo Man nodded vigorously.
“Isn’t there some way to work this out?” I asked over the growing chorus of honking horns. “You can’t stay wedged in here all night. The hotel will call the police. They probably already have.”
“I got you the lawyer,” Repo Man pointed out, inaccurately.
The kid sat up slowly. “I guess you have to take it,” he said. “I can’t pay. I’m going to get laid off.”
Repo Man held out his hand. “I’ll need the key to get the car straightened out.”
The driver took the key off a key ring emblazoned with the BMW logo and handed it over slowly.
“If it’s any consolation,” Repo Man said, “you’re not alone. You’re the fifth car I’ve popped in two days.”
“I’ll get it back,” the kid said.
“You do that,” said Repo Man. “Buy yourself a lottery ticket.”
“ASSHOLE,” the kid muttered when the car was once more hooked up and towed away, a process accomplished with enviable dispatch.
“I’m sorry,” I told him. I couldn’t think of much to say to a stranger that wouldn’t sound officious or trite, like “Money is not life’s report card.” Ha. Anyway, I needed to go back to my guests, who, I hoped, were finding places to park even as I stood there in the garage. “Are you going to be all right?” I asked him. “Do you have a ride home?”
He looked up as if he’d forgotten I was there. “What kind are you?” he asked.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Lawyer,” he said. “What kind of lawyer are you?”
“Immigration,” I told him.
His faced brightened noticeably, even in the garage’s sickly light. “No kidding?”
I nodded, my heart sinking. I knew what was coming.
“Can you get me a green card?” he asked.
Probably not. The Immigration and Naturalization Service—the INS—tends to look with disfavor on granting permanent residence to the unemployed. “Are you on an H-1B?” I asked him.
“Lynn?” my husband called, from the top of the stairs. “Is everything all right?”
“Fine,” I told him. “I’ll be right there.” I turned back to the kid.
“An H-1. Yeah,” he said.
“Well, under the H-1B visa you are only allowed to be here while you’re actively performing services for the employer. After that you lose your status, and you’re technically illegal. Your best bet is to try to find another job right away, if you can, and file for another H-1. You can work on a green card after that.”
He looked as if he might be near tears again, so I reached into my purse and handed him a couple of cards. “Here’s my card. If you call my office on Monday, I’ll talk to you for a few minutes. I won’t charge you for that. But I don’t think there’s much I can do.”
“Grady & Bartlett,” he read. “Lynn Bartlett. That’s you?”
“That’s me. And you are?”
“David Peh,” he said. “Thanks.”
“I have to run,” I said. “You can get home?” I asked again.
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