The Good Wife (6 page)

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Authors: Stewart O'Nan

BOOK: The Good Wife

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FOR THE RECORD

“WHY?” SHE FINALLY ASKS HIM, NOW THAT SHE’S NOT GIVING ANYTHING away. “That’s what I want to know.”

“I don’t know,” he says. “Money.”

“We don’t need any money.”

“Everybody needs money.”

“That’s crap.” She sits back from the table to see if he’ll take it back.

He shrugs like there’s no good answer.

“You know, you’re an asshole,” she says.

“Now I am. I wasn’t before.”

“Yes,” she says, “you were.”

SAYING GRACE

SHE’S NOT SUPPOSED TO BRING ANYTHING, AT LEAST THAT’S WHAT her mother’s been broadcasting all week. It’s a dance: she doesn’t really expect Patty to show up empty-handed, even in the middle of moving. It’s Thanksgiving. She’d be disappointed, though she’d never say a word. At the same time, Patty’s not allowed to upset her plans by duplicating a dish she’s assigned someone else, so Wednesday after lunch Patty has to check in and warn her that she’s baking a pie.

“Not pumpkin,” her mother says. “Shannon’s doing pumpkin.”

“Is anyone doing apple?”

“Apple’s fine.”

Patty agrees to this before she realizes she doesn’t have any apples, meaning a trip to the store.

She cheats, driving cross-country to Iron Kettle Farm, where she doesn’t have to stand in line and face the racks of accusing newspapers. The big-boned girl in the apron who bags her apples asks if she’s having a boy or a girl. Do they have a name yet? Patty chats with her, then walks back to her car, humming in the bright air.

The feeling’s brittle, though it returns as she’s rolling out dough for the crust and slicing the apples. It’s sunny and the house smells of flour and cinnamon. Finally she’s doing something useful. And then she thinks how she’d make Tommy all of his favorites if they’d let her bring food in.

The pie turns out nicely. Eileen admires it as she drives Patty
the next morning. Eileen’s the only one of them that doesn’t bake. Her assignment, like every year, is the sweet potatoes, impossible to ruin. Patty has no lap, and traps the slippery casserole dish against her legs as she cradles the pie plate. The Bronco reeks of Eileen’s cigarettes, a smell that nauseates Patty even as she craves one. It’ll be worse at her mother’s, everyone drinking, sneaking peeks at her as they cook and watch football.

“How does Cy get out of going again?” Patty asks.

“It’s his folks’ year.
I’m
getting out of going.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Hey, don’t apologize,” Eileen says. “They’re no picnic either.”

“I wonder if Marshall will bring his olives again.”

“How much you want to bet Mom bought him some special.”

“Watch, they won’t be the right kind.”

She wishes she and Eileen could just keep driving like this, never get there, but the county’s only so big. When she looks out over the open fields and pines and miles of gray sky, she thinks of Tommy locked in his cell, and the day seems unreal and pointless, an empty ceremony. They’ll waste the whole afternoon trying to ignore the obvious—and she has so much to do for the move.

Here’s the hump where the culvert runs under the road, and ahead on the left, the dark box of the house, Marshall’s custard-yellow boat of an Eldorado nosed up against the garage.

“I can’t believe I’m really going to do this,” Patty says.

“What are you going to do, sit home by yourself?” Eileen says. “Besides, it’s not like you’re flying solo.”

Her mother’s oversalted the walk; pellets crunch under their feet. They come bearing gifts, each carrying their own dish. The front door’s not locked, but Patty rings the bell anyway, then stands back.

“Maybe no one’s home,” Eileen jokes, just as they hear the
tread of footsteps in the hall. The knob crunches, the door opens, and there’s their mother, her hair just done, wearing an apron patterned with holly and candy canes.

She holds the door for them, waving them inside. “Come on, don’t let the cold in. You’re just in time for Santa Claus.”

She takes the pie from Patty, and Eileen follows her to the kitchen. As Patty hangs her jacket in the front hall closet, shoving her scarf into one arm, Shannon appears with a glass of wine, her little black dress too sexy for Thanksgiving. She gives Patty a bony hug. She’s deeply tanned, her chest freckled from some vacation. Beside her, Patty feels pasty and dumpy with her egg of a belly.

“How
are
you?” Shannon asks. “Mom’s been telling me about Tommy and what’s happening.”

All Patty can do is shrug and nod.

“If there’s anything we can do,” Shannon says, waving a palm across the space between them, erasing a word on a blackboard. “I mean it.”

Patty thanks her, already moving toward the living room and the brassy clatter of the parade.

Marshall stands up to kiss her skimpily, his mustache brushing her cheek. He’s neat—perfect dry-look hairstyle, blue blazer, cologne. Even on a holiday he’s dressed to make a sale with his creased slacks and Italian loafers.

“How’s it going?” he asks, subsiding.

“Good,” she says, and that’s the extent of their conversation.

She has to bend down to kiss Randy and Kyra, both too absorbed in the TV to get up from the couch. Patty tickles Randy just to bug him, but Santa’s coming, and she flees to the kitchen and sits at the table sipping a Tab while her mother frets over how there’s no space left in the refrigerator. Shannon and Eileen try to help but just end up getting in the way.

“If you want to do something useful, stay out of my hair,” their mother says, then asks Eileen to run downstairs and grab a new milk for her. Shannon takes the onions and the cutting board to the far end of the counter.

It could be any year, except that Patty’s allowed to sit and watch it all play out.

Randy and Kyra cruise through, bored and lobbying for sodas.

“Why don’t you go up to your mother’s old room and see what kind of toys you can find.”

“It’s all girl stuff,” Randy mopes, but goes, clumping up the back stairs after Kyra.

“The game’s starting!” Marshall calls from the other room, but there’s too much work to do. Patty snaps the green beans while Shannon assumes her usual job peeling the potatoes. Eileen checks the turkey, pulls it out, the fat crackling in the pan. Their mother runs a finger down a recipe, her lips moving as she wipes her floury hand on the holly and candy canes. At one point all four of them are working quietly, the kitchen warm, the window on the backyard fogged.

“Think he’s okay out there all by himself?” their mother asks, meaning Marshall.

“He’s fine,” Shannon says, then goes out to check on him. She comes back with an empty tumbler and pours him another gin, forking out three olives from a tall jar in the fridge door. Eileen gives Patty a wink.

“You taking orders?” Eileen asks, holding up her empty Genny Cream.

“Don’t overdo it now,” their mother coaches—a sore spot, because Eileen defends herself: “It’s my second.”

“She’s pacing herself,” Shannon says, handing her a cold one.

“I’ll make a fool of myself later,” Eileen says, “I promise.”

“I didn’t say that,” their mother says. “Did I say that?” and Patty
thinks nothing has changed except her own situation. Shannon’s still the success, Eileen still the wild girl. Patty’s always been the quiet one. Now what is she?

Pitied. A family embarrassment.

It must be the old house that’s making her feel this way, the memory of her teenage misery and eagerness to leave, her belief that life had to be better away from their mother, and somewhere in there, hiding like a ghost, their father and the happy Thanksgivings of her childhood, the laughing black-and-white movies they’d play on the living room wall.

She excuses herself to go to the bathroom and then sits on the cold ring of the seat with the door locked, her face buried in her hands.

At the sink she splashes water on her face, pinches her cheeks, and still she looks like shit. She’s always been the least attractive of the three (a worry to her mother through high school), and her old insecurity returns, fresh as ever.

In the living room Marshall’s talking to the players the same way Tommy does. On top of the TV leans the sepia, almost formal portrait of her father in the tooled gold frame, looking out at them like a kindly minister. It’s been there since Patty was fourteen, a never-changing shrine she’s always hated, as if her mother was using him as an excuse.

Her mother sets out the chips and dip, and the kids magically reappear, making Marshall turn up the volume.

“How many sodas is that for you?” he asks Randy.

Shannon drifts in, then Eileen, taking a break. Her mother comes in without her apron, lifting a glass of wine.

“Who’s winning?” she asks, as if it matters.

For a few minutes they’re all together and Patty thinks she should use the opportunity to say something—to thank them—but the
game has their attention. She’ll have another chance at dinner when they go around the table and everyone says what they’re thankful for.

Halftime clears the room, all but Marshall, who seems bent on watching all six hours of football. Her mother finishes her wine and ties her apron on again. The stove is smoking more than the fan can handle; Eileen props open the back door so the cold pushes in. Patty wants to help but there’s nothing to do.

“Go sit and relax,” her mother says.

“How about setting the table?”

“That’s the kids’ job.”

The first game isn’t close; the second’s the Cowboys, who Tommy despises. Marshall swears at the set. In his gold frame, her father smiles, unconcerned.

Outside, a front is moving in, darkening the room. Patty gives up on the game and stands at the picture window, warming her hands over the radiator, gazing at the vine-choked thicket of trees across the road, waiting for the first flakes. No one drives by; there’s no motion but a crow gliding down to inspect a dark blotch in the snow. From the kitchen comes the whir of a mixer and the creak of the oven door—someone whipping the potatoes and checking the turkey. They must be getting close.

She’s surprised she’s made it this far. She’s tempted to slip upstairs and poke around their old room, but resists. Even in the best of times the view of the lone dogwood in the front yard is enough to send her into a tailspin.

The easiest thing is to concentrate on tomorrow, when she’ll see him again. He’ll ask how her Thanksgiving was.

It was all right, she’ll tell him. It was good.

SELF-STORAGE

SATURDAY PATTY MOVES—A PERFECT DAY, BRIGHT AND DRY, THE ditches sparkling with melt-off. The storage place opens at eight. All morning they drive back and forth in a convoy, Patty leading in her car, Eileen following in her Bronco, then Cy in his truck with the big stuff They do it room by room, moving from the rear of the house to the front, saving the garage for last. Patty can’t lift anything, and stands aside as Eileen backs Tommy’s old recliner through the door.

She springs for lunch, ordering subs, thinking this may be the last call she makes from this number. They sit on the swept floor of the bedroom to eat, the sun warming the bare wood. Without furniture, the place looks the way it did when she and Tommy first saw it, excited to finally find something they could afford. Compared to his apartment, it was palatial—and no more roaches. They didn’t mind that it was in the middle of nowhere, or that the hill it perched on might be trouble in winter. They even liked Mr. McChesney in his overalls and his clunker of a van. It seems so long ago, Patty thinks; it’s only been three years.

After lunch, the house empties out. The waterbed drains, a hose running to the tub. Cy slides the heavy lettuce crates full of records into the bed of his truck. Patty crams her trunk with odds and ends from the kitchen. When she sets the toaster oven on the passenger seat, it spills three years of crumbs.

“I think we can get the rest in one load,” Cy says.

“I think so,” Patty agrees. She thought it would take a lot longer, but all that’s left are some stray free weights and oil cans and Tommy’s softball gear; the old snowshoes and bamboo rods on the wall came with the place.

They don’t even need Cy’s truck for the last load, and leave him to sweep out the garage.

At the self-storage, she takes a last look before pulling the corrugated door shut. She’s twenty-seven, she thinks, and this is everything she owns.

WISH LIST

“SO, WHAT DO YOU WANT FOR CHRISTMAS?” TOMMY ASKS OVER THE phone.

She laughs. “What, are you going to run out to the mall?”

“Seriously. Pretend everything was normal. What would you be asking me for?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “Nothing.”

“Come on.”

Whatever it was, she can’t think of it.

“Remember that little crib thing at Babyland?”

“We don’t have the money for that.”

“You still want it, right?”