Four Wives (12 page)

G
AYLE BECK WALKED THROUGH
the quiet house, across the marble-tiled kitchen, up the back stairs to her bedroom. The door was open a crack, the lights left on, but dimmed just right’just enough to allow her eyes to adjust from the dark hallway. Everything was perfect, as it always was. Her staff was well trained. Careful.

One at a time, she pulled off her heels and placed them on the cedar shelf next to the other dress shoes, lined up an inch from either end. She reached back, unzipping her dress, letting it fall to the plush carpet before stepping out. She draped the dress over an antique rack reserved for dry cleaning. With steady, even movements, she finished undressing, slipped on a robe and walked to the bathroom.

None of this was easy with bleeding hands.

She turned on the light but did not look in the mirror. Instead, she pulled open the vanity drawer and removed every brown prescription bottle she could find. Without expression, she lined them up in a row on the white marble counter and read the labels. As her fingers moved over each one, the charges inside her began to settle.

The master bath in the Beck house spanned the length of the bedroom, twenty feet long from window to window. With thick white carpeting, a sunken whirlpool tub encased in black and white marble, his-and-hers water closets and antique vanities, it was meant to be a private sanctuary. Every detail had been carefully planned. The steam shower had an oversized seat. Soft chairs with plush throws sat before a small fireplace. She had given much thought to the design of this room, selecting the fixtures, their placement on the walls. And she had imagined romantic moments, tranquil respites from everyday life. From the children they were planning.

Now the sound of the breaking glass just beyond her shoulder was all she could recall as she stood within the embrace of the gentle surroundings. What had it been about this time? Misplaced car keys? The wrong brand of scotch? Did it really matter? From their first year of marriage, his anger had shown itself, then crept through their lives until it had filled every place that was vulnerable. Her money. His job at the family’s firm. Their love-making, which deteriorated steadily, sharply, until there was no love to be found in the act.

There was a time when she tortured herself to find an explanation, identify the mistake she must have made along the way. But the truth had come slowly, in flashes so little she could easily set them aside in her mind as aberrations of an otherwise good marriage. Now, she could see the path that had brought them to this darker place. Troy had come from a modest home just over the Hudson River. A Jersey boy. He’d gone to a local college, worked his way up to a spot on a desk at Haywood, Locke & Ward. And his ability to bring in the cash had brought him job security, and the feeling that he was invincible.

All of that disappeared when he married Gayle. The ambivalent respect he had achieved on the trading floor was compromised by the shadow of nepotism, and he became self-conscious, angry. The pride he had taken in making his own way was gone, a consequence he had not considered. He began to grab hold of anything he could find to satisfy his drowning ego. The humor they had shared was replaced with angry barbs at her family members. Still, he thrust himself in their midst every chance he could, flaunting his power as the husband of their youngest daughter. He used the Haywood name to get dinner reservations at exclusive restaurants, spent their money wildly on clothes, cars, and she could only guess what else. And when all that failed, he’d turned to Gayle.

Still, she stayed by his side, defended him to her family. She was a steady wife’supporting his flailing career when the market turned on him, enduring eight in-vitro attempts to give him a biological child when they could have easily adopted. Nothing had been enough.

Her hands were still bleeding as she removed two Percocets from one of the bottles. It was an old prescription in Troy’s name’painkillers for one of his sports injuries. She could feel the small shards of glass digging deeper into her flesh as she poured water into a porcelain cup, then swallowed the pills. Dr. Ted would not approve. Mixing pills, looking for any way to stop feeling. It was beneath her. But wasn’t it beneath her to stay in this marriage? To watch her son evaporate before her eyes? To let Troy do the things he had done?
What will you do, Gayle?
Dr. Ted had reminded her.
You’re forty-one. Divorce will mean a life lived alone. People will pity you.
Her mother had agreed.
You chose this man, now you have to live with it. He’11 fight you to the death for everything
’
the money, the house, Oliver. How will you, of all people, handle that?

His steps were silent as he approached the bathroom door, and he was upon her without warning.

“I’m sorry,” he said, standing in the doorway like a contrite child who’d lost his temper.

Gayle was too startled to speak. She had a keen instinct for such moments, and she was now observing everything about her husband’the color of his face, the sincerity of his voice, muscle tension, hand position. She concluded quickly that it was over. But in other ways, just beginning.

Troy approached her, taking her hands, which had quietly set down the pill bottles.

“Look!” he said, as if surprised. “I told you not to clean up. We have people for that.”

He let go of her to find tweezers and ointment, his spirits lifted by the presence of a need he could now tend to.

“Here,” he said, taking her hands again. With careful movements, he pulled small pieces of glass from her wounds, smiling at her as he might at a child who’d not listened and come home with a scraped knee.

“Silly girl,” he said, and Gayle watched him silently, her eyes never leaving his face’cautiously waiting for the signs of change. It never really left, his rage, and where it had gone now’how deeply it had receded’ could not be known for certain.

“There,” he said, placing the tweezers on the marble counter. Then he applied the ointment. When the Band-Aids were in place, he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her forehead. It was then that she saw it’the need that had not been placated by tending to her cuts. He sighed then moved his body closer to hers, until she could feel his erection against her thigh. His hands slipped from her face, then down her shoulders to her breasts.

It was a reflex, this paralysis that kept her from moving, from screaming’some kind of preprogrammed response that seemed to take her over in moments like this one. Moments of fear.

Troy reached under her robe and grabbed her thighs, pulling her against his groin. She heard the release of his belt buckle, then the sound of the buckle as it hit the floor. He turned her around, leaned her against the sink. Then he was inside her, moaning in her ear.
I’m so sorry,
he said, pushing himself in deeper as though he might somehow erase his transgressions.

It was over quickly. Troy threw off his clothes and stepped into the shower. The smile on his face was pleasant, as though they’d just made love. And Gayle wondered if this was true’if this was what it was. Other women spoke of those things. Didn’t they? Complaining about quickies before kickoff time, surprise fondling at the bathroom sink. Maybe that’s all this was’the things women laughed about over glasses of wine. For Gayle, there was a familiarity about the rage, childhood perceptions that bred the quiet acceptance of what was now her adult life. Maybe there was broken glass in every home. Perhaps that explained the silence about such things. It was very likely her own internal defect that provoked the swells that were now moving through her.

It didn’t take long for the pills to kick in. She felt a lightness in her head as she gathered her robe from the floor and wrapped it around her. It was over now. She had to get changed, get herself downstairs to check the floor for any glass. Oliver would want to say good night.

M
ARIE HATED FEW THINGS
the way she hated golf. It was a deep and complex relationship’Marie and her hatred of golf’that had grown in lockstep with her husband’s infatuation with the game. Like a mutant cancer that seemed to afflict suburbanites in disproportionate numbers, golf had gotten under Anthony Passeti’s skin the moment he’d smelled the grass in Hunting Ridge. No longer satisfied with a Saturday morning spent puttering through the mail or lingering over the sports section of
The Times,
Anthony had to be at the range, pounding those stupid, dimpled white balls into the air with a stick. And what began as little more than an hour or two each weekend had quickly evolved into six-hour rounds at the public course in Cliffton.

Six hours, followed by lunch and beers for a cumulative total of eight hours’eight precious hours he could have spent with his girls, or his wife. Eight hours every Saturday from April until October, weather permitting, that could have been put to use helping out around the house, grocery shopping, even reading a novel. Anything else. Then there was the endless talk about the round, the false sense of accomplishment if he shot below 90, or the all-consuming frustration when the golf gods failed to smile upon him. It was such a frivolous game, not merely because it demanded so much time, but because of the way it taunted and provoked its followers’giving them just enough satisfaction to keep them coming back, all the while remaining impossible to master. With its elusive allure, it was the worst kind of tease, and it had wrapped itself around her husband’s brain, turning his brilliance into outright idiocy.

Marie had planned on fighting the small battles against suburban atrophy with her girls. The uniformity of wealth, the complete separation of the sexes into outdated gender roles, and’the worst offender’the absence of cultural diversity were not subtle forces, and thereby easily subverted through parental education.
Yes, Suzanne, Mommy likes to work.
Or,
We go to the church in Cliffton because we’re Catholic.
And Marie’s favorite,
You can’t have that because it costs money, and money is something that has to be earned.
For all her complaining about Hunting Ridge, she still preferred these conversations to the endless warnings about the dangers of the city. And then there was the grass, though the black spots were starting to get to her. But what she had not planned on, what now had her head in a vice, was the cunning, insidious, disease that had infected her grown-up husband.

Fortunately for Marie, she was a formidable opponent. Unmoved by the physical beauty of the course, unwilling to measure herself by the sure-ness of any given shot, Marie had decided to fight the foe from within. The girls were older now, spending more time with their friends on the weekends. There was work, but there would always be work. Now was the time to take it on, to save her husband from pursuing a trivial existence. His mind was a treasure, sharp and critical. He could digest the world’s news at warp speed, provide engaging discourse on any number of topics’ politics, the economy, theories of the universe. He had been her only competition in law school for summa cum laude. He had been the only man who had ever been able to go to the mat with her on matters of the mind. Even now, half bald with a small pot around his waist, he still could hold her attention with his analysis of a case.

Yet, here he was. The newest member of the Hunting Ridge Country Club’an honor that would cost more than they could afford to spend’ standing in a queue at the first tee. Watching her husband clench an invisible club, then drawing back for an air swing, Marie knew she was doing the right thing. She had to infiltrate the enemy camp. Painful as it was, there was no doubt in her mind. It was time to play golf.

It had taken him by surprise, as was the plan. Every weekend he would schedule a game. Every weekend, Marie would bitch about it, laying on the guilt at the time he was spending away from the family.

“Why don’t you play with me? You’d really enjoy it,” he would say, knowing she would rather shovel manure. Golf was a male conspiracy, Marie was certain. Eighteen long holes, shots that could not be rushed, slow play caused by overcrowded courses. It was nothing more than an elaborate excuse for men to be away from home half the day, then return exhausted, in need of some couch time, time spent doing’what else?’
watching
golf. All of that was about to change.

“Do you need some pointers?” Anthony asked after taking his shot.

“I’ll just take a swing.”

One after the other, Marie took swings, scattering balls into woods and water. It didn’t matter. Her complete ineptitude, her utter disregard of the most basic swing principles was working magic on her husband, infecting his own game, compounding his frustration. After three holes, a ranger rode out in a cart and asked them to keep pace. But Marie would not be rushed. Two holes after that, he came out and politely asked them to move to another hole, which they did.

“Marie, you have to play faster. Just pick up your ball after a few shots,” Anthony had pleaded.

“How am I supposed to learn if I do that?”

Three holes later, the twosome of men playing behind them had caught up. As she bent down to place her ball on the tee, Marie saw them approaching. In hushed voices, they talked to her husband, gesticulating forward, then back, then placing their hands on their hips. Anthony nodded up and down sheepishly, then said something that Marie surmised was some sort of apology for his wife’s poor playing. When the men were done discussing what to do with her’this creature from Venus’Anthony joined his wife on the ladies’ tee.

“Pick up your ball. They’re playing through.” His voice was serious, his expression a mixture of embarrassment and displeasure.

“Why? Aren’t there people behind them?”

“Yes. And we’ll have to let them through if we can’t keep up.”

Marie gave him a wry smile. “Oh my God, it’s a travesty!”

But Anthony was not finding the humor.

“Come on, honey … it’s
golf.”

With his face now turned up to the sky, Anthony shook his head. “I just got it.”

“Got what?”

“You have no interest in playing. You just want to ruin it for me.”

Marie sighed, tacitly admitting that she’d been found out.

“No, not ruin it for you. But maybe help you see that you’re wasting your life trying to get this stupid ball in a hole!” Marie held the golf ball up to his face, meeting his stare. “And don’t ever apologize for me again. If those men have something to say
about
me, they can say it
to
me.”

On it went as they drove the cart back to the clubhouse.

“You are becoming one of
them\
Neglecting the girls, neglecting the house, neglecting our marriage! And what’s with those locker rooms? The men’s is a goddamned palace and we hardly have a place to pee.”

After a very short while, Anthony stopped refuting each point with a counterpoint’an exercise that he once enjoyed, but now found tiresome. There was simply no point in arguing. His wife was right. He
had
been spending more time away from his family, his responsibilities. The burdens were placed on Marie, who spent every waking hour working or tending to their kids. She had always been that way’able to carry the weight of the world on her shoulders and not even flinch. He couldn’t match what she did. He didn’t want to. He was thirty-nine years old. He’d learned about all he was going to learn as a lawyer. With the thrill of the hunt long gone, it was now just a matter of churning out the cases. The commuting, the boredom of his work, the insatiable needs of the house and kids. Was it really so hard to believe that he wanted to play a little?

“What, you don’t have anything to say?” It was so unlike him.

They drove to the car, and Anthony loaded Marie’s clubs in the trunk, leaving his bag in the cart.

“What are you doing?” she asked him, though it was readily apparent as he handed her the keys and climbed back into the cart.

“Don’t you get it? This is the only thing in my life that I enjoy.”

Marie looked him in the eye, the implications of his words growing inside her, burning.

“The
only
thing you enjoy?”

Anthony sighed, his whole body melting into the white leather seat. As he spoke, he seemed deflated, yet strangely relieved.

“I don’t have to think out here’not about clients, or bills, or the girls’ every spat with their friends, the house falling part, or the fact that I fail you every day by leaving cereal boxes on the counter or wet towels on the floor.” He stopped for a moment, and looked away.

“I just don’t want to think anymore.”