Secret Lives of Second Wives

by Catherine Todd

  Plus, she was sneaky (I knew who facilitated Janet’s incursions into our lives), manipulative, and, despite her resentment of me, not especially nice to her father. She’d somehow acquired an air of superiority—possibly from ingesting so many organic vegetables—and appeared to disdain any opinions not her own. Jack seemed totally unable to handle her or keep himself from getting hurt. Of course, everybody who’s ever taken Psych 1 knows that a girl’s relationship with her father is complicated, but I mean, come on. Meredith seemed to delight in snubbing him, or maybe she was so self-absorbed she didn’t even notice. I’m sure Jack thought she was punishing him for the divorce or for not being there enough when she was little or for any of the other textbook resentments kids have against their parents. I don’t know. My own relationship to my parents seemed unexamined and bland by comparison, but at least we never kept lists of things we disliked about each other, the way Meredith had done to Jack when she was sixteen. She might have put away the paper, but mentally she was still keeping score.

  The worst thing was, Jack appeared to harbor the conviction that he could deflect such treatment by ignoring it. I thought there was very little evidence that giving dictators what they demand begets anything but more demands (what was Chamberlain’s visit to Munich all about, if not that?), but his common sense seemed to have deserted him. The more Meredith resisted his friendly overtures, the more polite he acted, as if she were a very exclusive club he was trying to get into. I thought he should stop rewarding her rudeness and quit acting like a paparazzo trying to coax a picture out of Princess Anne. I also thought he should stop making it easier for Patrick to evade responsibility, especially under My Roof. That was the trouble: I’d started assessing and judging, even though I’d promised myself I wouldn’t. So far I’d resisted the fatal next step—making suggestions—but my tongue was getting callused from biting back the words.

  As long as I’m being completely honest, I might as well admit that I began to look at Jack differently after I started having trouble with his children (mothers-in-law are a given; everybody expects to have trouble with them). The judgments and the assessing had gotten to be a habit, and I couldn’t seem to turn it off. I couldn’t help it: I blamed him—maybe not entirely, but certainly in part—for their flaws. How could someone so kind and talented and smart have produced offspring who were such backsliders on the evolutionary ladder? You were supposed to replace yourself with something better, wiser, more successful—wasn’t that the aim of parenthood? And if—by genetic anomaly or misguided actions or whatever—you did happen to produce a neurotic, egocentric trouble-maker on the one hand and a lumpen loser boomeranger on the other, shouldn’t you try to do something about it? And shouldn’t you try to protect, if not yourself then your innocent spouse at the very least, from their bad behavior?

  Okay, so I have to admit that that last part is really about me. Maybe I’d lost perspective; I’d undoubtedly lost my sense of charity. Maybe I just didn’t like them because they didn’t like me. But I couldn’t help resenting it that Jack let them make life difficult for both of us without making the smallest push to get them to behave themselves. My mistake was in convincing myself that if you really want things to work out, if your intentions are good, then things will turn out all right. Not that I could necessarily document this philosophy with objective evidence, but by and large I’d believed it anyway. Now I was having my doubts.

  So there it was, the family dinner as metaphor for the family dynamic. It wasn’t quite The Corrections, but it wasn’t The Sound of Music either. Well, maybe it was, at least while Maria’s future stepchildren were still putting toads in her bed. I looked down at my half-eaten salmon congealing on the plate and considered excusing myself, like Patrick. I thought longingly of a good book and a quiet evening, all by myself.

  The only trouble was, there was no place to go.

  16

  On Sunday, Moira and Patrick trooped off to Janet and Valerio’s, I there to meet, if I understood correctly, Meredith and Justin. Instant replay, minus Jack and me. Jack looked tight-lipped and harassed; I guessed he’d been invited—make that urged—to go and had refused. At least I hope he’d refused. He seemed tense.

  “Will your mother be back for dinner?” I asked.

  “Who knows?” he said. He looked at me. “What?”

  “I only ask,” I said carefully, “because I was wondering if I should marinate the lamb chops.”

  Not carefully enough, apparently. “Just do whatever you want to,” he said curtly.

  I said nothing.

  He sighed. “Look, I’m sorry, Lynn. I know it’s inconvenient. I can’t control my mother. I can’t control Patrick. Or Meredith.”

  Or Janet, I thought.

  “We’ll just have to roll with it and see what happens, okay?”

  I nodded. I wondered if he was talking about more than dinner. “Okay,” I said. I took a breath. “We probably have a couple of hours at least. Would you like to get out of here and take a walk? We could drive up to Skyline or just walk around the neighborhood. The tulip trees are out,” I said.

  He looked at me oddly, since I had not hitherto displayed a notable interest in horticulture. But it was spring, which comes to California in fits and starts beginning sometime in December, and besides, the house was feeling a bit claustrophobic. “Not just now, thanks,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said again, putting my arms around his neck, “we could just stay here.”

  He smiled, but he stayed motionless. I kissed his ear.

  “Don’t,” he whispered.

  “Headache?” I asked, sounding more bitter than I intended.

  He stiffened. “That’s not fair,” he said. “They might be back any minute. How would it look?”

  As if you put your wife first, I thought. “They aren’t two-year-olds peeking into Daddy’s bedroom,” I said. “They’re adults. I bet even Meredith and Patrick have had sex. They’d understand.” I exempted Moira out of a sense of delicacy. No one likes to think of his mother having sex, even if the act last took place in 1969.

  “I wouldn’t feel comfortable,” he said. “Also …” He trailed off.

  “Also?”

  “I don’t want to be used to make some kind of statement to my family,” he said.

  “Used?”

  “I’m sorry, Lynn; that’s the way I feel.”

  The only thing that kept me calm at that moment was the recognition of a modicum of justice in the accusation. “Fine. But, Jack, I have to say …”

  He looked at me. “Yes?”

  “Things are not going well.”

  “Of course they’re not going well.” He sounded exasperated. Your business is in chaos, and I have the tax problems. We—”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  He looked trapped, as if I’d suggested airing our personal differences on Judge Judy. But at least he didn’t pretend not to know what I was talking about.

  “It’s only temporary,” he said.

  “I hope so,” I told him. “I—”

  “We’re back,” Moira called, her voice floating gaily from the front door. “Anybody home?”

  Jack flashed me a look that said, See, I told you so, but he had the decency not to say it aloud.

  MOIRA’S ARRIVAL DREW ME BACK, relieved, from whatever I’d been about to say. I wasn’t even sure myself. Probably I’d been unwise to bring it up in the midst of a family visit. The presence of a blood relative under the same roof as oneself can play tricks on the psyche and subvert the best of intentions. Once Moira went home, Jack could snap out of it, as my mother used to say about behavior of which she disapproved—“it” in this case being his role as an anguished fifteen-year-old desperately trying to keep the peace. We would sit down calmly and tackle the issues, one by one. We would make decisions. We would abide by them.

  We would have sex in every room in the house if we wanted to.

  Actually, having sex in any room in the house would have been e
xceptionally gratifying, not to mention rare. Jack and I had each passed the age—about twenty, if I remember correctly—when sex had the kind of desperate urgency generally found between the covers of airport fiction or on Lifetime TV. When you build a life together, other pleasures—good food, a back rub, even a hot shower—get thrown into the physical equation. But still, now that I’d been with Jack for a year, I didn’t want to go back to the intermittent asceticism of my intramarriage days. “Appetite comes with eating,” Rabelais said, and as the tension built from all the problems in the household, the table wasn’t set very often.

  It’s not as if I were wandering around in some supercharged state of frustrated desire, but I felt cranky and possessed of a kind of restless troublemaking quality I didn’t quite like. I was lonely, too, if “lonely” is the right word for what I was feeling, surrounded as I was by all things Hughes.

  When Moira left and Patrick was out of the house we could straighten things out. Meanwhile, though, there was the rest of the weekend to get through. I had plenty of time to think things over.

  ON MONDAY, clientless, on the verge of debt—or worse—and facing God-knows-what professional calamities, I nonetheless embraced the office with the enthusiasm with which you might greet, say, the sight of dry land in Jaws. The scuff marks on the desk, the half-eaten bagel in the waste-basket (the janitor had forgotten to come again), my framed diploma on the wall (a law-school graduation present from my parents) were at least tangible reminders that I had a life, even one that was reeling out of control. I could almost tolerate Brooke’s smirks, if not with cheerfulness at least with equanimity. At least in the office, my personal life would take a welcome backseat to other issues, or so I believed. And by the time I left to go home for the day, Moira would be gone.

  “Any calls?” I asked Adam hopefully. If things got any quieter, I would have to take to the airwaves or bus-stop benches, like the ambulance chasers on late-night TV (Had an accident? Whiplash? Bad back? Call …) or the ads that trumpeted help with DUIs.

  Adam studied his message pad. “A couple,” he said. “That Dr. Strela called. The one who was here before?”

  I nodded.

  “He wants to come in this afternoon,” Adam said. “I said I’d check with you.”

  “My calendar is clear, as far as I know,” I said, trying not to sound too grim. At least Alexei Strela might turn into a paying client.

  “Yes, but I thought I should check. I’ll call him back, if that’s okay with you.” He cleared his throat. “Also,” he said, lifting the second message pad, “a Mrs. Vivendi called. She would like you to call her back at your earliest convenience.”

  He said it in such a bland tone of voice I realized he knew perfectly well that “Mrs. Vivendi” was Jack’s first wife.

  My heart sank. Janet had never, ever called me for anything, much less contacted me at the office. “I don’t suppose she said why,” I asked.

  “No, she didn’t,” he said, still in the same tone of voice. “She left her number.” He reached toward me with the slip of paper.

  I took it gingerly, with a caution befitting the weapon of invasion that it was. This would teach me to congratulate myself on my escape to the haven of my office. No place was safe from incursion anymore. “Thanks,” I said, insincerely.

  “Don’t mention it.” He gave me a small, pitying smile.

  “THANK YOU FOR CALLING ME BACK,” Janet said formally. Her tone suggested that she was surprised I had capitulated so easily.

  “Your message sounded as if it might be urgent,” I said, already on the defensive. “I hope everything is all right.”

  “Well, I suppose so,” she said.

  I waited.

  “Actually, there are some things we need to discuss,” she said.

  “I’m listening,” I told her, my stomach doing a nasty little flip. Tension always goes straight to my digestive tract.

  “Not on the phone,” she said ominously. “I was hoping we could have lunch.”

  “Just the two of us?” I squeaked. I did not want to have lunch (or breakfast or dinner) with Janet. I had a fear—possibly irrational, possibly not—of one-on-one encounters with her. I had the feeling she would use the knowledge gained—of my choice of food, my table manners, the way I spoke to the waiter, I don’t know—against me somehow. Needless to say, I had never expressed any such reticence to Jack. I mean, I could see how it would sound. Nevertheless, that is what I felt. Now that Gavin de Becker has confirmed that “Trust your instincts” is good advice in potentially threatening situations, I feel vindicated and far less paranoid.

  “Yes, of course,” she said, as if we were weekly luncheon companions.

  “Um, this is an extremely busy week for me,” I told her. “Maybe you should just tell me what—”

  “Lynn, I am trying to make a friendly gesture here,” she interrupted. “If you don’t wish to reciprocate, that’s fine, but I’m asking for—I need—an hour or two of your time regarding a matter of some importance to my family. It’s important. I wouldn’t ask otherwise. Shall I make an appointment to see you at the office?”

  Recognizing defeat, I conceded. “That won’t be necessary,” I told her. “I’ll rearrange my schedule,” I added, attempting to save face. “What about Thursday?”

  “I was thinking tomorrow,” she said.

  I flipped through some papers on my desk for a long moment. “I guess I can do that,” I agreed.

  “Good,” she said. “I made reservations at Il Fornaio at eleven-thirty.”

  I noticed that “made” in the past tense (I hadn’t overlooked the “my family” reference either). “That’s too early for me,” I said, in a last-ditch attempt at rebellion. No wonder Meredith and Patrick were so screwed up.

  She sighed audibly. “The restaurant’s much less crowded then. I thought it would be quieter. What time can you make it?”

  I looked at the ceiling for inspiration. “How about one-thirty?”

  “Just as you like,” she said, sounding amused. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  17

  I’m back,” Alexei Strela said, settling into a chair in my office. He looked more European today, in a collarless shirt and a sports coat. Despite his colloquial, almost faultless English, there was something indefinably not American about him. Maybe it was something I sensed in his dark eyes, a hint of melancholy that didn’t quite square with New World optimism. Immigrants are all, to some extent, people with secret lives whose pasts are buried deep. Somebody said (or probably said) that the happy and the powerful do not go into exile. At least not of their own volition.

  He seemed tense, but not ill at ease. I smiled. “How can I help you, Dr. Strela?”

  He leaned forward. “I hope you don’t … I’m sorry to tell you this.” He folded his arms.

  I waited, hoping that he had not committed visa fraud or something that would make it impossible for me to help him. “Go on,” I said.

  “I’ve been to see another law firm.”

  I laughed. “That’s it?”

  He shrugged.

  “That’s perfectly okay,” I assured him. “This is America. We expect competition. Everyone wants the client to be satisfied. What’s the problem?”

  He studied my face as he spoke. “They told me I couldn’t get the classification you told me about.”

  “Extraordinary ability?”

  “Yes.” He shrugged. “Not on the basis of my current position. I know we joked about it last time, but they really did seem to think I’d have to get a Nobel Prize or something like that.” The words were diffident, but his manner suggested that if circumstances were different, it would not have been out of the realm of possibility.

  I sighed. It was not easy to explain to clients what the INS was like. It was inscrutable, maddening, and unpredictable, and there were almost as many viewpoints as to how to fulfill the organization’s rules and regulations as there were immigration lawyers. There were lawyers out there who really d
id believe that the EB-1 requirement for the Nobel or the Pulitzer or whatever meant exactly that, and that nothing less would suffice, while others took a far more generous view of the necessary qualifications. The second group didn’t usually trumpet their views to the first, for obvious reasons.

  “You’ll tell me if I really can’t get a green card, won’t you?” he asked.

  “Yes, I would tell you, but I don’t think you need to worry too much.” I took a breath to explain. “Look, Dr. Strela, the other lawyer isn’t really wrong. The INS does define evidence of ‘extraordinary ability’ as winning the Nobel Prize or its equivalent. But the truth is, if they’re not here already, Nobel Laureates don’t want to leave where are, so lawyers rarely get a client like that. There are other categories of acceptable evidence, and I’ve gotten this type of green card for at least two hundred people, not one of whom has ever been to Sweden in a tux to collect an award.”

  “So it’s not hopeless,” he said. He had big hands, and a white scar that ran along the top of his wrist under his cuff.

  “There are no guarantees,” I told him. “But there’s SLAC, and, unless I miss my guess, you’ve done important work before you came to this country. Did you mention any of your prior work to the other lawyer?”

  He shook his head.

  “Then possibly he—she?—wasn’t fully aware of your background.”

  He smiled grimly, as if at some private joke. “Possibly,” he said. “What would I have to do?” he asked, still watching my face.

  “You need to give me as much information as you can about your work, now and before this. I’d like a list of your publications, awards, and any articles about your work or conferences where you’ve spoken.” I passed him my standard handout explaining the necessary documentation. “Also,” I said, “you will need supporting letters from experts in your field who can confirm your work and ability.”