Secret Lives of Second Wives

by Catherine Todd

  Jack seemed impervious to the effect of his forced jollity. “Too bad Merry and Justin couldn’t make it,” he said. “I know your sister is really proud of you, too.”

  Patrick guffawed. “Right, Dad.”

  “I’m perfectly serious,” Jack said. “You know how much she admires you.”

  Patrick stared in mute disbelief at his father. I couldn’t blame him. I was startled into silence myself.

  “So what kind of training will you have?” I asked, recovering.

  “There’s a course I have to take,” he said. “The firm will pay for it,” he added quickly.

  “They must think a lot of you if they’ll pay for your training,” Jack said. “Don’t you agree, Lynn?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Harrison and I always expected people to get their training on their own.”

  Patrick’s face turned sour. “I’m sure the firm pays for everyone, not just me.”

  I had apparently said the wrong thing. Jack looked at me. “Maybe Lynn can give you some pointers about working in a law office,” he said.

  I saw the desperation in his eyes and realized, suddenly, that his mood, his overreaction, had as much to do with me as with his son. What had I thought? That he wouldn’t notice that I was preoccupied and distant? “I’d be happy to,” I said.

  “Thanks,” Patrick mumbled dismally.

  “Great,” Jack said heartily, raising the wine bottle. “Another glass, anyone?”

  Patrick shook his head. I lifted my glass to be filled. “Here’s to your success,” I said. “I hope it’s a lot of fun.”

  “Fun, yeah,” Patrick said dubiously.

  “I’m serious. You might actually enjoy it. I did—do—at least when I’m not preoccupied with how to get business. And you won’t have to worry about that.”

  “No, I won’t have that much responsibility,” he said.

  I wondered how it would be to have this sad sack around the office, his leaden pessimism the complete opposite of Brooke’s maddening perkiness. I wondered which was worse. Then I was struck by an idea that sprang from either an extremely generous impulse or an extremely diabolical one, I’m not sure which. “Well, you can always go to law school if you find you like the practice,” I said recklessly, considering who was bound to pay for it if he did. “But in the meantime, when do you start?”

  “Monday,” Patrick intoned, as if he were announcing the imminent commencement of the Apocalypse.

  “Then, if you’re not busy, could you come over to the office tomorrow afternoon and help me out? I have some files I need to go through with my associate—”

  “What associate?” Jack asked.

  “My former associate,” I said quickly, “who’s still sharing the office till she finds something else. Anyway, we could use your help for a couple of hours, and it might help you to get the feel of things before you actually start.”

  “Yeah, I guess I could do that,” Patrick said. Despite himself, he looked rather pleased.

  “Of course you can,” Jack said heartily.

  “THAT WAS REALLY NICE OF YOU,” Jack said afterward. He sighed. “I don’t know what happened to him. He used to be so energetic and curious about everything. Now he doesn’t seem very interested in anything.”

  Patrick had already gone home, and we were lingering at the restaurant. Being alone with Jack made me feel edgy and uncomfortable, the probable signs of a guilty conscience. There was a kind of wary formality between us, like people who meet at a class reunion after having slept together a decade before. I was determined that until I decided what to do, I should go on behaving normally, if that’s the right word for it. But it was getting harder.

  “I’m glad you asked him to help you,” he said. “It was a kind gesture.”

  It wasn’t all that kind, actually. I hoped it didn’t boomerang. I wasn’t going to tell Jack that I planned to foist Patrick on Brooke and see what happened. It was something like mixing two entirely incompatible elements to find out if they would combust. At least it might prove interesting, and I didn’t think that either one of them had that much to lose. Maybe they would sort of cancel each other out, and if they focused on each other, I could get both them out of my hair.

  “We’ll see,” I said.

  “What do you mean by that?” he asked sharply.

  “Nothing,” I said. “I mean, I really hope things work out for him.”

  Jack smiled tightly. “You seem to be in a very forgiving mood today,” he said. “First Harrison and now Patrick.”

  I said seriously, “I have a lot to forgive Harrison for, but not Patrick. He hasn’t done anything to hurt me.”

  “I wish I believed you really felt that way,” Jack said.

  “Well, I do,” I assured him. “Anyway, forgiveness is good, don’t you think?” I asked lightly.

  “For most things, I suppose.” He looked at me. He put his hand over my wrist in a gesture that should have been comforting but wasn’t. “But some things are … unforgivable.”

  The contents of my stomach congealed into a leaden, indigestible ball. My throat was dry. I lifted my water glass and took a big swallow, trying to keep my hand steady.

  “The trick, I guess, is knowing which is which,” I told him.

  30

  I tried to exercise a certain degree of discipline and not think of Alexei—at least not think of him in that way—while I was at home, as if even the passing thought would mark my forehead with the scarlet you-know-what. But my self-control was eroding. I mean, bigamists did it—the newspapers were full of stories about men (always men, never women) who maintained separate wives, separate families in different states, with neither one the wiser. Pilots carried it off, too, if you believe Anita Shreve. I wondered whether the key to success in such deception didn’t lie in not caring too much, because when you did care, the unbridled fluctuations between … well, what? joy? rapture? and the anguished conviction that you could be causing pain to someone else were almost too much to bear.

  I’d had a modern Protestant upbringing, so my notion of hell was sanitized and shrouded in myth and no more threatening than, say, a ride on an un-air-conditioned subway car on a particularly warm day. Warm, not hot. Still, the pit beckoned. There weren’t any words to describe my afternoons with Alexei, even though I knew that my feelings were fueled in part by the overhanging sense of jeopardy, the probable brevity of this impulsive affair. Alexei’s emotions, I thought, were driven as much by loneliness and the need to connect as by passion. None of that mattered. For the first time, I understood why poor Hester Prynne, who probably did believe in Hell with a capital H, had risked perdition to be with Dimmesdale. Sin, which I had previously equated with stealing from department stores or cheating on your income tax, suddenly acquired both gravitas and allure.

  COOPER LIVINGSTON, which had offered Alexei a job once his green card status was assured, changed its mind under pressure and promised to sponsor his petition, provided they didn’t have to pay. There is a reason the comic strip Dilbert makes the evil Catbert the head of human resources at its mythical company. Normally I had to suck it in and take whatever HR dished out or risk losing the institutional client, but Alexei was, to put it mildly, special. I went around HR, who insisted that not only could company policy never be changed but that even the mere suggestion made Dr. Strela’s future with Cooper Livingston doubtful. I contacted the head of the department where Alexei would be working and pointed out the obvious advantages of helping my client with his immigration status, evoking the specter of SLAC’s international project if they didn’t. Besides, as I pointed out, it would cost them nothing. Since I’d already written the petition once, it was relatively easy to reformat the work and resubmit it.

  Now we were both out on a limb if it didn’t come through.

  “I don’t know what will happen,” I told Alexei, “but it’s a different INS service center and a company petition, so it might not trip whatever alarm went off the first time. If we get an approva
l, we could still have trouble down the line, but at the very least it buys you some time.”

  “Time,” he said, as if it were an alien quality. He sighed. “This means I have to take the offer with Cooper Livingston, doesn’t it?”

  “No, you don’t have to,” I said, “although they’ll be rightfully pissed if you don’t.” Also, I would never get another piece of business from them as long as I lived, but I didn’t mention that.

  “Pissed,” he said, drawing out the s sound. Certain words in English amused him, although he spoke it so well I sometimes forgot it wasn’t his first language.

  “Anyway,” I said, “I thought you wanted to accept.”

  He sat up and pulled the blanket up over his knees. “I’ve been alone a long time,” he said. “Most of my life, in one form or another.” He turned toward me. “I don’t particularly want to leave right now….”

  I feel a sharp stab of doubt. I didn’t want to say anything that would make him stay, or go. It wasn’t fair when so much was still undecided. He’d made my life more supportable, but the possible complications threatened to upend it altogether.

  “You could come with me,” he said after a moment.

  My fingernails dug into my palms. “I could,” I acknowledged.

  “I don’t want to pressure you, Lynn,” Alexei said, no doubt encouraged that I hadn’t refused outright. “But we could live in New York. You could start a whole new practice. Whatever you wanted.”

  We’d always understood, I’d thought, that this was temporary. The sudden surge of possibilities made me mute.

  “I am pressuring you,” Alexei said. “I’m sorry.” He grinned suddenly. “I’m just waiting for a little guidance. Something to put a man out of his misery.”

  I smiled back. “It’s my misery, too,” I said lightly. “I don’t like leaving you either,” I conceded, wanting to give him something. “It’s like a phantom limb. I feel you even when you’re not there.”

  Alexei, the scientist, corrected me. “The severed nerves keep sending signals to the brain,” he said.

  “The way you can still see light from stars that are already burned out?” I asked.

  His hand closed over mine. “Yes, like that,” he said. “But that’s an image of loss.”

  “I suppose so,” I said, trying hard for a breeziness I didn’t feel. “How about ‘We’ll always have Paris’?”

  Alexei said, “I’ve seen Casablanca, too, Lynn. Do you call that a happy ending?”

  I shrugged.

  “Have you heard of quantum entanglement?” he asked. He lifted our entwined hands as if they were Exhibit A.

  “Is that something in physics?” I asked.

  He laughed. “I guess you haven’t.”

  “It isn’t my strong suit,” I said. “I did warn you. Anyway, what about it?”

  “It’s very romantic,” he said.

  “If you say so,” I said dubiously.

  “Oh, very,” he said, releasing my hand and tracing a line down my hip with his fingertip. “Just listen: A pair of subatomic particles that have interacted at some point, like this”—he demonstrated a particularly pleasant sort of interaction, which made my concentration slip—“retain a connection forever. If you know the spin state of one entangled particle—up or down—you’ll know that the spin of its mate is in the opposite direction. What’s really amazing …”

  “Yes?” I breathed, in something of a spin state myself.

  “Yes,” he agreed. “What’s amazing is that the spin state of the particle being measured is decided at the time of measurement and then somehow communicated to the other particle, which then simultaneously assumes the opposite spin direction.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said, bewildered.

  “Neither did Einstein. He called it ‘spooky action.’ But here’s the romantic part,” he said. “No matter how far apart they are, even millions of light-years, they’ll remain entangled as long as they’re separated.”

  “Why?” I asked, my head pressed against his chest.

  “Nobody knows for sure. But it’s been demonstrated repeatedly through experimentation.”

  “Like this?” I asked, a minute later.

  “Yes,” he said. “Like this.”

  “I think I could learn to like physics,” I murmured in his ear.

  BROOKE, who, despite the annoying qualities enumerated ad nauseam here, was not lacking in the brains department, saw right through my little scheme.

  “Why are you throwing your stepson at me?” she asked. Since I wasn’t paying her anymore, she had abandoned all pretense of sucking up, which was okay with me. “I don’t need any help getting dates.”

  I tried to look as if I were shocked—no, horrified—at the very idea. “It probably did seem that way,” I said apologetically. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think. As a matter of fact, I don’t think you’ll like him particularly.” I sighed a rueful, affectionate-stepmother sigh. Please don’t throw me into the briar patch.

  “Why not?” she asked suspiciously.

  I shrugged. “Forget it,” I said. “I can go through the files with him on my own. I’d just like him to get a feel for what goes on in a real office, such as it is, and since you’ve worked with Harrison, too, I thought … Anyway, just forget it.”

  “What’s wrong with him? Is he one of those e-holes?”

  “Oh, no, nothing like that.” I turned back to the papers on my desk, shuffling through the pile.

  “What, then?” she insisted.

  I shook my head sadly. “Patrick’s smart, charming, and good-looking. I’m not sure why, but he seems to lack self-confidence. That’s why I thought, before he started his new job, a sort of dress rehearsal might make him feel more comfortable.”

  She let out a breath. “He got a job?”

  “As a paralegal,” I said. “And he had help.”

  “Maybe your husband could put in a word for me, too,” she suggested.

  I winced inwardly. “I could certainly ask him,” I conceded.

  “Does your stepson say ‘dude’?” she asked.

  “Definitely not,” I assured her.

  She twirled the ends of her hair around one finger. “I guess I wouldn’t really mind taking him through some of the paperwork,” she said. She looked at me. “I know how busy you are with the Strela case.”

  Despite my best intentions, I blushed. “That’s very kind of you, Brooke, but I don’t want to impose unfairly.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “You can owe me one.”

  WITH A MAN IN THE OFFICE, Brooke suddenly started tossing her head and speaking in brittle phrases, like someone being interviewed for a part in a movie.

  “We used to represent a lot of very important clients,” she said, posing next to the filing cabinet, her hand draped possessively over the top. “Of course, the list is highly confidential, but I can assure you that you’d be impressed.”

  Patrick stood transfixed, his glance darting back and forth between Brooke and me in confusion. I knew what he was wondering: Who’s in charge here? At such moments Brooke reminded me rather forcibly of Janet, which, in my heart of hearts, I knew was the real reason I’d arranged this introduction.

  “If you like, I can show you the process we go through to file a visa application for a client,” she said. “Will you be doing any immigration work, do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” Patrick said. He looked at me.

  “Probably not,” I said. “It’s a corporate practice.”

  “Um, then what did you want him to do, Lynn?” Brooke asked me.

  “I thought maybe you could sort the files into ‘viable’ and ‘not viable,’ ” I said. “That way I’ll have some place to start building the new practice.”

  “Can do,” she said, in her chirpiest tone.

  I looked at Patrick to see how he was taking it. He looked puzzled, as well he might have. Since he didn’t look actively hostile or sullen, I wasn’t positively discouraged with my effo
rts.

  “Great,” I said. “Brooke will walk you through what you need to know. In the meantime I haven’t had lunch yet, so I thought I’d go bring back a sandwich. I’d love to get you two something as well. Brooke? Patrick?”

  “I’ve eaten,” Brooke said. “But I wouldn’t say no to a croissant. Provided it’s a good one,” she added.

  Patrick laughed and looked at me to check my reaction.

  “My sentiments exactly,” I said. “Patrick?”

  “I guess that would be okay,” he said. “Thanks.”

  I TOOK MY TIME, detouring by Draeger’s to find fresh croissants, which, owing to their fat-laden qualities, were not as ubiquitous as they had once been. Almost everyone I knew claimed to be on a low-fat diet, but nobody was getting any thinner. Someday people would probably discover that what you really ought to be eating for optimum weight loss was food cooked in lard. I personally am waiting for the Chocolate Éclair Diet. But I digress.

  When I got back to the office, the door was open, and I could hear Patrick—Patrick!—recounting a story about Meredith in animated detail. His voice carried into the corridor, and I hesitated before going in, because I knew that my presence would douse whatever warmth might have been kindled in the room. A sad admission, that.

  “Anyway,” he was saying, “my sister heard about this sect called the Breatharians who were supposed to live in some monastery like Shangri-la in Bolivia or someplace like that. They were supposed to exist on air and ‘good vibes’ or whatever. I mean, they didn’t eat. My sister loved that. She was all set to run off and join them when she found out it was all a crock of shit. My sister is seriously weird,” he said.