My Father's Wives (22 page)

The phone vibrated in my hand. I looked down and scrolled slowly through the pictures. Claire and I coming through the revolving door, that fleeting instant before the surprise. The expression on my face when I realized. Me on my knees with the kids’ faces buried into my sides. Claire and the kids, smiling for the camera. Phoebe and her best friend, Macy, hugging with exaggerated smiles. Macy is Betsy’s daughter; the next picture was of the three of them—Phoebe and Macy with
Betsy between, all of them beaming. I looked deeply into Betsy’s smile, using my thumb and forefinger on the screen to enlarge her face, until the two girls disappeared and it was only Betsy, her dark hair flowing, so much like Claire’s. Her eyes were wide, her teeth stunningly white. Betsy looked perfect, and yet there was something in the photo that didn’t sit right. I stared in silence, breathing deeply. Shut my eyes, opened them again. I couldn’t pinpoint what was askew, and yet I was absolutely certain something was.

Meanwhile, cars were beginning to arrive in the parking lot behind me. I recognized several of the faces as they piled out: teachers, parents, little boys with their usually unruly hair combed neatly, little girls in bright-colored dresses, ribbons in their hair. I saw Claire’s car pull in behind the bench. The rear door opened and both my kids popped out. Phoebe never even looked in my direction, she just headed straight into the building, but Drew saw me and came running at top speed as Claire pulled away to find parking. I went to my knees and he dove into me, reckless and trusting, as certain as he could be that his father would catch him. I hugged him tight, turned him upside down, and dangled him by his feet.

“Tummy! Tummy!” he yelled, his shirttail covering his face. His bare tummy was too inviting not to tickle. “Tummy!” he yelled again, louder this time.

I bent down and grabbed his hands with the one I had free, pulled him so he was right-side up, and dropped him softly onto his feet.

“Again!” he yelled.

I laughed. “Not now, we don’t have enough time,” I said. “We need to get you inside to sing.” I took him by the hand and we began to walk toward the school. The sun was setting over the top of the building, casting long shadows all around us. Drew was humming. I couldn’t make out the tune, if there was one at all. I looked down at his face and watched as he passed through the shadows into the sun, then the shadows, then the sun, and every time he emerged into the light he wrinkled his nose and squinted as his too-long hair flopped over his forehead.

Then I stopped walking, more abruptly than I meant to because Drew’s arm jerked backward and he fell into me. I crouched down to his height, our faces inches apart. “Buddy,” I said, “I hope you love this place as much as I do. It’s such a beautiful place.”

Drew looked around. “Dad,” he said hesitantly, “it’s school.”

“I
know
it is,” I said, “but it’s a beautiful place. You always have to be somewhere; this is a wonderful place to have to be. Do you understand what I mean?”

He nodded slowly. Despite the fact there was no way he understood what I meant, because even I didn’t understand what I meant.

I dropped Drew off in his classroom and hurried to the gymnasium, where about a hundred folding chairs had been opened in two long rows. It’s always a race to get seats for the concerts because there are more parents and grandparents and sisters and brothers than there are chairs, so half the room winds up standing. Experienced parents have a plan; in our case, Claire parks the car, and I grab the two best seats I can find, sit in one, and place my briefcase on the other. This time I got hugely lucky: two prime seats were available, third row, center. I settled in, took a deep breath, and looked around. I saw my friend Scott Edwards two rows away, energy trader, smart as a whip. Next to him John Severin, older, probably sixty, on his second wife who isn’t a whole lot older than the kids he has from his first. Jon Biele in the row behind me, drinks as much as anyone I’ve ever known. I leaned back in my seat and took another deep breath: familiar place, familiar faces.

Then, from behind, I felt two hands cover my eyes, small with warm palms, slick with moisturizer. They smelled of pomegranate, and faintly of a perfume I have loved for years though I don’t know the name.

“Guess who?”

I didn’t have to guess. I just let her hands rest over my eyes, enjoyed the scent.

“How was London?” Claire asked, moving my briefcase and taking the seat beside mine.

Before I could answer, another face materialized as if from nowhere. It was Betsy, fully made up, hair done, dressed more for a dinner date than a school concert. “Evening, Jon,” she said, her voice scratchy. “I wore your favorite jeans.” They probably weren’t even the same jeans she wore the night I fondled her; she says that all the time.

Claire was fiddling with her camera. The lights went down and applause began to ring across the room as the headmaster made his way toward the stage. Betsy wedged between Claire and me so we were all sharing two seats. She and Claire locked arms, Betsy’s hand resting on Claire’s thigh, her other in her own lap, trembling slightly. I closed my eyes as the applause settled and the headmaster welcomed us all to the lower-school concert. It felt good to close my eyes. The second graders were the first to take the stage. Drew’s grade would be next; I had a moment to rest. A child’s voice announced they would be singing “Hakuna Matata” and “World Without Love.” As the singing started images began to swirl in my mind: Drew’s face going in and out of the shadows, Phoebe letting go of my hand when her friends were nearby, Lowell Cranston with his feet up on a desk, the dapper man in the tuxedo on the sofa in Bruce’s apartment. I cracked open an eye and looked down to see Betsy and Claire holding hands. Then the applause rose again, and Claire and Betsy together stood up.

“Doesn’t he look
so
cute?” Claire whispered excitedly.

I stood as well and looked up to the stage. There was Andrew in the front row, his hair neatly combed, shirt buttoned all the way up.

“He’s your mini-me, Jon!” said Betsy. There was a faint but clear whiff of alcohol on her breath.

Drew and his class were singing “Puff, the Magic Dragon,” which usually makes me laugh, but I was too tired. It was all I could do just to listen.

Claire was beaming when the first graders shuffled off the stage. She scrolled through the pictures she had taken with her phone. “This one’s good,” she said to herself. “His eyes are closed in this one.”

Then the fourth grade was marching in, which meant Phoebe, as
well as Betsy’s daughter, Macy. Betsy rose and leaned over to kiss Claire, her butt directly in my face. “I’m going down to the front to take pictures,” she whispered.

Claire squeezed her arm. Betsy lingered in front of me a moment, then worked her way through the seated row to the aisle. I stood to allow her to pass and remained standing as I watched the kids file into place. Phoebe was on the second of three risers, all the way to the right side. Most of the kids were scanning the audience in search of their parents, but not my daughter. Phoebe was staring straight ahead, a confident smile on her face. She knew with absolute certainty her mother and father were out there beyond the lights. She didn’t need to see us to be sure. With that thought, to my horror, a lump came up in my throat, large and with great force. I swallowed hard, desperate for a drink of water or anything else that might keep me from bursting into tears.

The teacher nodded to a boy named Aidan, who stepped forward to a microphone that was positioned a foot over his head. The teacher adjusted the mike downward, drawing a laugh.

“The fourth grade,” Aidan announced, “will be singing ‘All You Need Is Love,’ a song made famous by a band from England called the Beatles.”

Another ripple of laughter. There isn’t anything in the world funnier than children when they aren’t trying to be.

Then they began to sing the song. It wasn’t perfect, but it was markedly better than I would have expected. I knew the song backward and forward; I couldn’t count how many times as a child I listened to my mother sing it. And now here was Phoebe, wearing a lime-green dress, her eyes straight ahead, singing it confidently with a little smile on her face.

I felt a squeeze of my hand. I turned and found Claire staring right into my face, her eyes filled with tears. She leaned close and whispered, “I know how difficult it is for you with your dad. But
you
are the best father I could ever imagine.” Then she squeezed my hand again
and I squeezed back. As usual, she knew how I felt better than I did. And so we stayed that way for the rest of the performance, holding hands, both of us crying as we watched our daughter sing her grandmother’s favorite song.

THE CONCERT WAS A
smashing success. All were delighted with the songs sung and photos taken and cupcakes eaten. When we arrived home, Claire suggested to both kids that they kiss me good night. “Daddy has been working
so
hard,” she said. “He needs his sleep.”

“I’m all right,” I said to her privately. “I thought we’d sit up and have a drink after they hit the sack.”

“No whispering!”

The children admonished us—we don’t allow exclusionary discussion in the house. The kids aren’t allowed to keep secrets from each other, so in their minds Claire and I should not be allowed either.

“Daddy gets to whisper,” Claire told them. “When you are grown up you get to make the rules and then you get to break them.” Then, under her breath, to me: “You’ve been exhausted. Get some sleep. I promised Betsy I would spend some time on the phone with her tonight.”

“Why?”

Claire wrinkled her brow. “I assume you know they’re going through some stuff.”

“What does that have to do with you?”

“I am
there
for her,” Claire said. “She’s my friend.”

I let it go at that. I kissed both children on top of their heads and Claire quickly on the lips, then I went up the stairs. I stopped at the top and looked left into my bedroom, then turned right and made my way, once again, down the hallway to the guest room. I turned on the lights. Everything was exactly as it should have been. There was no indication anyone had set foot in the room since I last had, two days before. I switched the light back off and shut the door behind me.
That door usually remains open, but for some reason I felt like closing it.

And that was when it hit me. In fact, it nearly ran me over, a burst of cold electricity that began in my gut and spread until I could feel my fingers tingling. Very slowly, standing in the exact space where it had all begun, I reached into my breast pocket for my phone. The image on the screen was as I had left it, Betsy Buchanan smiling, her daughter and mine eschewed by the manner in which I had enlarged the face. My hands were shaking as I placed my thumb and forefinger once more to the screen and then gingerly slid them together, watching as Betsy’s features slid further away, then as Phoebe and Macy appeared. My breath caught in my chest, literally, in the instant that I realized what it was I had missed.

A few steps behind the three smiling faces, filling the space between the top of Macy’s head and her mother’s shoulder, was a man. His face was turned to the side and I didn’t recognize it. But I would never forget the ponytail. The man was wearing a pink, button-down shirt, open at the collar with a pair of designer sunglasses hanging on the shirt, beneath his chin. He did not appear to be talking to anyone. Though I couldn’t be certain, it seemed he was by himself, and it also seemed he was glancing down at Betsy; in fact, as I looked more closely, it seemed pretty clear that he was staring at her ass. “I get it,” I said. And shut off the phone. Back in my bedroom I undressed and left my clothes in a pile in the closet. I brushed my teeth and slid between the crisply laid sheets, cool and soft. The image of Claire and Betsy holding hands at the concert flashed before my eyes. I couldn’t recall ever seeing such closeness between them before. Had they grown markedly closer in recent times? Why wouldn’t I have known that? I had so many questions, but in the end only one of them really mattered. Was it possible that Betsy was the one having an affair? And Claire knew the details, because she used our house? Was it possible that it was actually Betsy, who is so much like Claire I had twice mistaken her, in our guest room that day?

Well, why would Betsy not use her own house? That answer came quickly. Her husband traveled all the time and she did not seem to have the most specific understanding of his plans; just this week she had told me she
thought
he was in Prague. I assume if you aren’t certain if your husband is in Prague, you also aren’t certain when he’s coming home. Such uncertainty would have to make scheduling an extramarital tryst complicated.

That actually made some semblance of sense. More difficult to fathom was why Claire would allow Betsy to use our home. “I’m
there
for her,” she had said. I wouldn’t have expected Claire to facilitate anything like that, but then if there was one thing I had learned from all this it was that people are sometimes capable of things that surprise me.

With that I rolled onto my side, fluffed the pillows, and fell asleep with all the lights on. I never heard Claire come in, but when I awoke nine hours later she was snoring gently beside me.

I FELT FRESH AND
awake on the train in the morning, despite a gloomy sky. I proceeded to the gym, where I worked out hard on the treadmill, a little sore on my right hip where Jordan had inadvertently jabbed me with an elbow. I smiled at the thought.
Michael Jordan accidentally hurt me playing basketball
. Whatever else had come of the previous eleven days of my life, I would always have that.

I ate breakfast at my desk as I sifted through e-mail. I saw the file titled “junk” but did not open it. There wasn’t any reason. I hadn’t a need for a penile enlargement kit, and the phone Cranston had given me was in my pocket. I’d checked it twice already. There were no missed calls.

I was on the floor, stretching my back, reading the
Wall Street Journal,
when I heard a light tap at my door. I looked up expecting Bruce but instead found Ken, wearing a blue blazer with an orange bow tie and matching pocket square.