The Pretend Wife (14 page)

W
E SEEM TO THINK
that things in life are clearly labeled as right and wrong, as if the world's been divvied up by someone with a giant ink pad and two rubber stamps. We're deeply invested in the notion that when we choose to do the wrong thing, it's because we're weak or lazy or compelled by our desires or our overriding ids. Because, if this is the case, then we can blame those who do the wrong thing and pin on them the suffering that wrongness causes. And, if the world comes clearly labeled and people fail to do the right thing because of their own shortcomings, then we can believe that doing wrong is easily avoidable. We can believe that we can do right and we can be good.

I used to believe this more or less, because there is some truth in it, somewhere. But this theory sells life short. The world isn't that simple, and the labels of right and wrong, if they exist at all, get smeared to the point of illegibility. And then where are you? Or, more pointedly, where was I?

I was staying. At the time, I thought it was wrong because I felt like I was giving in to something and I've
always associated that feeling of giving in with weakness. I thought that it was all wrapped up in Elliot. I think I wanted to believe that I was using Vivian's plea for me to stay as an excuse to linger here in this house, stricken as it was with so much grief and love, to linger in my role as Elliot's wife. But it wasn't that simple. It had to do with Vivian herself. It had to do with this woman, this mother, and the fact that I needed something from her. Of course, I barely understood any of this at the time.

I walked back into the kitchen carrying my stuff. Elliot had the restless air of someone in a doctor's waiting room—he looked at me expectantly, his arms crossed, his eyes wide. Jennifer was holding Porcupine and waving to Bib from the open French door, leading to the deck. I could see Bib in her waders, waving back like a sailor on a ship.

“I'm staying,” I said.

Jennifer turned around. “Oh, good,” she said, relieved.

“How did she do it?” Elliot asked, referring to his mother.

“I don't know,” I said. “She's a force. An unwieldy force.”

“I warned you about that,” he said, and then he smiled broadly. “I'm glad you're staying.”

“Me too.”

 

First, I called Eila. I used the rotary phone in Elliot's bedroom, and was pretty sure that I was timing the call after Eila's tai chi class, in hopes of getting her at her most subdued.

“Eila!” she said, as if shouting her own name were an acceptable way of answering the phone.

“Hi, it's Gwen.”

“Gwen,” she said, letting out a full breath. The fact that it was only me meant that she didn't have to put on the whole show—maybe just a quarter of the show. I always wondered what the real Eila—or, well, that would be Sheila—was like.

“I have a sick relative. I came for the weekend and they need me to stay longer.”

“A sick relative?” she asked. “What kind?”

I wasn't sure what she meant—what kind of sick or what kind of relative—so I answered both. “My mother-in-law has cancer.”

“I'm so sorry,” she said, although neither sincerity nor empathy were her strong suits. “How is Peter taking it?”

I was surprised that she remembered my husband's name. “Better than I thought he would.”

“When will you be back? The Westons, the Murphys, the Greers.”

“I'm hoping just a few days,” I said. “Hopefully, I'll be back for the Greers, Wednesday afternoon.”

“Let's make that essential. The Greers on Wednesday. I
need
you, darling!” And then she started talking to her dog, Pru, and hung up.

Peter was next. I wasn't sure what to expect from him. I dialed our home number on the rotary, sat down on the edge of the bed, and waited for him to answer. On the bedside table, I noticed a small boat—the kind that would normally sit in a bottle. I picked it up. It was light as if made of balsa wood. I was expecting the answering machine to kick in, but Peter answered at the last moment, a little breathless.

“Hello?”

“It's me,” I said.

“How are things with you, Mrs. Hull?” he said jokingly, and I kind of wished he hadn't sounded so chipper.

“Not perfect,” I said, thinking that I could tell him—right now—about having kissed Elliot on the lake. I set the little balsa wood boat down on the night table. “Where have you been? You sound like you're out of breath.”

“I was doing sit-ups with the music cranked and almost didn't hear the phone.”

“Do you crank the music while I'm not home? Is that why the neighbors give me dirty looks?”

“AC/DC,” he said. I imagined him suddenly in a different life—a beloved bachelorhood—a life where he had the time to acquire his perfect abs, but he'd have a stagnant taste in clothes and hair products and music and pop culture references. Hadn't I kept him up-to-date, refusing to let him stagnate in an era, as bachelors so often do? I was good for Peter, I decided. He needed me, but, in the same moment, I wondered if he needed me in a way that really mattered. “So what's going on?”

“I have to stay a few more days.” I saw Vivian in my mind's eye, the way she looked at me when she'd said,
I'd recognize you anywhere.
The moment she'd said those words to me, my heart felt full and taut, and now just thinking of them, the feeling was back. My chest filled with pressure. I closed my eyes for a moment and took a deep breath.

“Really?” Peter said. I couldn't read his tone—was he just surprised or was he enjoying his faux bachelorhood and cranked-up AC/DC?

“Don't act too bent up about it,” I said.

“No, no,” he said. “You just caught me off guard. What's going on?”

“She's doing badly,” I said. “And I feel like I'm help
ing some, an extra pair of hands.” I felt guilty now. I hadn't really helped much. I hadn't done the dishes even. I added quickly, “I think I'll make my vegetarian lasagna tonight and do the Mrs. Fogelman deep-freeze standbys.” When I was twelve or so, Mrs. Fogelman had been the head honcho of community outreach at her church, and she and my father made a deal that I would help her out every time she cooked for charity. I learned how to make every casserole known to man, how to divvy it up in single portions and store them in freezer bags. When I went to a few conferences as a communications director, I loaded the freezer for Peter just so, but overestimated my time away and we ended up eating from the Ziploc bags for months.

“It's your forte,” he said, although he pronounced
forte
as
fort.
It was a joke of my father's, one that's only funny if you don't intend it to be. “Stay and help.”

“I called Eila,” I said. I put my finger on the top of the balsa wood boat's sail. It was on hinges so the sail lowered down. “She was okay with it. I caught her right after tai chi.”

“Smart thinking.”

There was a lull in the conversation. I wondered if he was trying on jealousy again—if he was feeling tight in the collar. Or maybe we both knew that if I started to talk about what was going on, it would open up a longer, darker conversation.

“I miss you,” Peter said.

And I knew that he was wrapping things up. “I miss you too,” I said.

“Keep the updates coming,” he said.

“And you take it easy on the neighbors.”

“I will,” he said. “Scout's honor.”

I hung up the phone—the earpiece was so heavy that it was satisfying, in a strange way, to settle it in its cradle. The little boat caught my eye again. I pushed its sails up and down and back up again, wondering what had happened to the boat's bottle. I assumed it was broken—an errant football being tossed across the room knocking it off a shelf—but the boat with its airy body and its light frame survived intact, a little artifact of Elliot Hull's childhood. What did that mean, metaphorically? A waterless, bottleless boat?

 

Vivian was dozing and Jennifer was exhausted, so Elliot and I offered to take Porcupine and Bib to the grocery store with us while I shopped for the fixings for Mrs. Fogelman's deep-freeze standbys. In the driveway, Elliot and I tried to figure out the complex straps of Porcupine's car seat.

“That way,” I said.

“Nope. I think it's this way,” he said.

We jiggled the straps and crisscrossed them and laughed. Finally, Bib got too impatient and did it for us. “See!” she said. “It's easy!”

“For you,” Elliot said.

“She's a child prodigy,” I said.

“I have a very high IQ,” Bib said.

“Do they test that in school?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I don't know.”

Elliot drove Jennifer's minivan. “I feel like I'm at the helm of the
Proud Mary,
” he said, squaring his strong shoulders. “This thing is massive.”

“Who's Proud Mary?” Bib asked from the backseat.

“To explain Proud Mary I'd have to start with the steamboat industry,” Elliot said. “Then move to the sixties and Credence Clearwater Revival, and then I'd have to go over Ike and Tina Turner,” he said.

“And you'd have to explain what it's like workin' for the man every night and day,” I said.

“It's really hard to work for the man,” Elliot said.

“Who's the man?” Bib asked.

Elliot didn't answer. He just started singing the song. I kicked in some backup—a few low
rollin
's and some
hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo,
which seemed to amaze Porcupine. We were pretty terrible, but distracting, and that was our overriding mission. I wondered when I'd tell him that his mother knew the truth. She'd
recognize me anywhere.
Why did those words strike me so deeply, even when my mind just gave them a glance? I couldn't explain it, but I knew that Elliot would have a theory. I wasn't sure that I was ready for his theories, though, about me, about mothers. He knew me so well, but I wasn't sure how it was possible. Had I once been brave enough to hand over that much of myself? I was young then. I didn't know any better, but I did know better now, didn't I? We came to a red light and I had to fight the urge to lean over the seat and kiss him. He was so kissable.

In the store, we cruised the aisles. Porcupine was now in one of the shopping cart's baby seats and Bib was asking about every odd item she couldn't immediately place—coconut milk, saffron rice, dried black-eyed peas, a pumice stone, headless fish laid out on ice chips. We did our best taking turns explaining, while trying to gather stuff for multiple recipes at once. Porcupine started to cry so I held him and bounced and pointed out things with
my elbows and sandals. “Some of that,” I'd say. “Um, no, no, the bigger size. That one.” And there was Elliot, looking at my legs, my pointed toes. “This one? Or this one? This one here? Or that one there?”

When we got to the check-out line, Porcupine was asleep and he suddenly seemed to be made of rocks. My arms were burning, and Elliot remembered that we were missing bread, of all things. He and Bib went running off and left me at the checkout.

“They'll just be a minute,” I told the cashier.

“It's a good thing your husband helps out. You've got your hands pretty full,” the cashier said.

I almost corrected her, saying that he wasn't my husband and these weren't our kids, but Elliot was supposed to be my husband, so I just smiled and nodded and even threw in a tired shrug as if to say:
Oh, well, this is the way it is!

When Elliot and Bib reappeared in view, I was relieved to see them. “Here they come!” I said, but it was more than a simple kind of joy. I felt like they were racing back to me, for me. I remembered Elliot's experience a few days earlier, running into the guy he'd known in high school with his full cart and his kids. Right now, taking long fast-walking strides, like a cross-country skier, he seemed to be gliding. He seemed happy. This was what he'd wanted, wasn't it? Bib looked happy too, swinging two bags of bread in her fists.

“Here we are!” she yelled. “Here we are!”

Here was this beautiful simple moment—this sweaty baby, this kid still wearing her rubber boots, Elliot and me in a grocery store being mistaken for a family. My childhood had suffered a gaping hole. I'd never felt ab
solutely in my element in any job. And had I ever felt truly and deeply myself with Peter? In this moment, pretending to be someone else's wife, being mistaken as the mother that I wasn't, I felt like I was where I was meant to be.

I
COOKED THE REST OF
the day—lasagnas, squash casserole, quiches, a thick potato soup. Elliot chopped vegetables. Bib measured and stirred. Jennifer moved in and out. And Porcupine's face was sometimes bobbing over her shoulder, sometimes over Elliot's, and then sometimes I'd find him on my own—my hands dusted in flour or gritty from potato skins. At one point, I remembered what it was like to be bustling around Mrs. Fogelman in her kitchen on a Sunday afternoon, preparing meals for people who'd just had a baby or who were coming home from surgery or who'd suffered a loss. There was a feeling of greater purpose. Dr. Fogelman steered clear, and Mrs. Fogelman and I became a well-oiled machine, gliding around each other, cracking eggs, whisking, setting up various timers for different dishes. Sometimes I would pretend that she was my mother. I would refuse to look at her face, concentrating instead on the middle of her body, her pale, freckled arms, and the apron tied around her waist. I loved it most of all when it was quiet except for a radio she had set up on the back of a counter. I thought I almost knew what it was
like to have a mother, but then eventually she would say something and I would look up and it would be Mrs. Fogelman, not my mother at all.

I couldn't remember ever having cooked with Peter. We'd shared a kitchen from time to time. He'd be fretting over one dish and me over another. But we never cooked together. This was different. Elliot and I swatted at each other and took time out to say, “Smell this fresh mint.” We brushed past each other in the small space between the counter and the island and the stove. I'd never been so aware before of the sexy physicality of cooking—the bending, the balancing, the whisking, the urgency of the dinging bells keeping everything speeding along and then slowing down, the dipping and straightening, the bowing to the food again and again. With Elliot in the kitchen, cooking wasn't just a service. It was more of an art, something you could infuse with love and attention to detail. It was sensual.

I thought of Bettina and Shweers. Was this the way life was for them? Was everything—even the simplest drudgeries of drying dishes—richer because they were together? I felt like my body wasn't just my own. Instead it seemed to stretch out to include Elliot. I was aware of him at every turn. I could feel him shuffling behind me or reaching in front of me. Elliot Hull in his baggy shorts, after all this time. Sometimes it seemed as if I'd known him forever.

Eventually I used up all of the Hulls' Pyrex dishes and pots and pans. I'd filled all of the pie crusts. The counters were lined with food set out to cool. The kitchen was hot and steamy, but it smelled good.

“She can cook!” Jennifer said.

“Turns out she can cook a lot,” Elliot said.

“But is it quantity or quality?” Jennifer asked, sidling up to the quiches.

“Only one way to find out,” I said.

We ate some from each dish, leaving most of it for the freezer. We also had saffron rice and coconut milk, things we'd picked up at Bib's request. Vivian was still dozing. An early dose of morphine had only taken the edge off. She'd asked for more and the second dose had knocked her out. I'd hoped to feed her, to have made something that she was hungry for, but it still felt good to see everyone gathered around the table, eating and mmm-ing and reaching across each other to refill their plates.

After dinner, Bib suggested a game of Pictionary.

Jennifer bowed out—Porcupine was fussing. “It's time for the night-night routine.”

I offered to sit with Vivian. “To keep her company,” I said.

“I'm a master at Pictionary,” Elliot said to me. “I once drew a gazebo in four seconds. You might miss some true artistry.”

“I once drew a carrot and Uncle Elliot thought it was a surfboard,” Bib said. “And he just kept telling me that it was a surfboard when it wasn't.”

“And then I pouted,” he said. The kiss in the rowboat flashed in my mind. His lips. It made my stomach flip. Out side, it was growing dark. I wondered if we'd find ourselves alone again, and, if we did, what would happen?

“Keep all the drawings and fill me in later,” I said.

“Our
masterpieces,
” Elliot corrected. “Right, Bib?”

She smiled sheepishly. “Right.”

The head of Vivian's hospital bed was elevated. Her eyes were closed. Her hair had flipped onto her face as if she'd been sleeping restlessly. I wasn't sure what to do. I knew that I wanted something from her.
I'd recognize you anywhere.
I wanted her to say those words again or something, anything, that would make me feel like I'd been found. How long had I felt like a child lost at the beach holding a pail that knocked against her legs, disoriented by family after family huddled under beach umbrellas. Out of all of the women who could have been mother figures for me—Mrs. Fogelman had done her best; Eila would never work out; Peter's mother was too cold and had never liked me much—I wished, in this moment, that I hadn't pinned all of my hopes on this one woman. She was dying. I wouldn't have enough time to absorb all of the maternal love that I was lacking.

I sat in the recliner across the room, afraid I'd wake her if I got too close. But she seemed to sense I was there and soon enough her eyes were open and she was looking at me. “Giselle,” she said. “I saved them in the middle of the night.”

“I'm not Giselle,” I said, crossing to her bedside so that she could see me by the light of the lamp on the table. “It's me.” I wasn't sure what to call myself—Elizabeth or Gwen—so I just said again, “It's
me.
”

I put my hand on hers and she gripped it tightly. Her face was stricken with anger. She said, “Tell him the truth.” And then she pleaded. “Promise me that much!” I understood that Giselle must have disappointed her in life, many times over, deeply. I felt like a traitor—as Giselle and as myself.

“I promise,” I said. “I'll tell him.”

Her hand relaxed. She closed her weary eyes. Tears slipped from them into her hair. “Fix my hair. It's all a mess,” she whispered. “Fix my hair.”

I pulled away a few wisps that were touching her cheek and then stroked her hair with my fingers and then my whole hand, again and again. Her hair was fine and soft. Oddly, now I felt like I was her mother, taking care of a fevered child, but that felt right too. Don't the roles of mothers and daughters turn on themselves so that daughters become mothers? The roles are supposed to be fluid, one teaching the other to be a mother so they can, one day, be tended to like a child. I hadn't realized that I would miss out on this too, tending to my mother in her old age. She would never grow old, not even in my mind's eye. Even in my dreams, she was young and looked like she did to me when I was a kid. “Vivian?” I whispered. “Is there anything I can get for you?”

She opened her eyes and then gazed at me. “They don't know,” she said, “and I don't want them to. Can I tell you?”

“Of course, anything,” I said.

“He left me for her,” she whispered. “My sister. Giselle.”

I wasn't sure how to respond. “Your husband?”

“She came here to stay after living with some guy in Burbank. She was heartbroken and then I caught them together. He loved her, but she didn't love him.”

“I'm so sorry,” I said.

“She didn't know how much she wanted to destroy me. She tried to steal everything from me. She was young. She loved me too, just as much as she hated me.” She pinched her eyes closed. “She's dead now. A motor cycle accident out west. When you're about to die, everything
comes flooding back. It comes back disguised and strange. Her mice … I could feel them in my hands.”

“It's the morphine,” I said.

“It's the death,” she said. “Don't tell the children.”

“I won't.”

“They think it was a woman from town. Why change the story now?”

“What's the truth,” I asked, “the truth you wanted her to tell him?”

“You promised,” she said, raising one finger. “
You
promised to tell him the truth—not Giselle.
You.
”

“But I thought you didn't want me to tell Elliot about this,” I said, confused.

“Tell him
your
truth,” she said. “A promise is a promise.”

In a few moments, Vivian's breathing became soft and slow. She was asleep again. I wasn't sure what to do or what I'd just promised. I wanted to tell Jennifer or Elliot, but of course I wouldn't. She was sleeping peacefully now. I set her hand down on the bed sheets and took my seat in the recliner.

Tell him now,
I thought, watching the thin curtains puff and billow in the breeze.
Tell him the truth. Promise me that much!

I wondered about her husband, Elliot's father, the affair with Vivian's sister. How long had she carried this secret? Had she never told anyone before? I wondered if, on my own deathbed, I would want to tell some long-kept secret. I thought of my own men. Which one needed to be told the truth now? Peter or Elliot? And what was the truth? How could I tell anyone the truth if I didn't know it myself?