The Pretend Wife Page 18

  “Okay,” I said. “Fine. Play golf. Just don’t do that thing where you’re so earnest.”

  “I’ll try to play a dis-earnest game of golf.”

  “Promise!”

  “I promise. I’ll be completely lacking all earnesty. And by earnesty should I mean honesty?”

  “Keep both of them in your back pocket.” I paused a moment. “How’s your mother?”

  “Can I be earnest now?”

  “Yes,” I said. “And honest too.”

  “She’s still alive, but I already miss her.”

  I WAS ON EDGE, YES, and watchful, observant. I was in my life and taking mental notes on it at the same time. I was waking up in the morning, opening my eyes to the sun, and then realizing that I was awake, that I was a woman in a bed, a wife. This was my foot, touching my husband’s foot. I would floss and see a wife flossing. I would say good morning to Peter in the kitchen, and he would be talking about grain cereals versus sugar cereals and the obesity epidemic, and corn syrup, and I’d see how I responded, nodding, agreeing, pouring milk into grain cereal, wishing it were soaked in corn syrup. He’d say something funny and I’d say something funny. It wasn’t the same as cooking with Elliot. This was merely banter. We took turns. Was that marriage? Taking turns?

  I’d put the photograph that Vivian had given me in the upper reaches of my closet. I felt guilty about hiding it, but also guilty about having it. And yet, from time to time, I found myself pulling it down and looking at it and thinking of Vivian and my own mother and how my mother was keeping watch over me. But what did she want me to do? I wondered. What did she expect of me? I didn’t know.

  I’d decided not to bring up golfing with Elliot, hoping it was just something Peter had said to rattle me. But then one morning I was getting ready for work and Peter was in his shorts and collared polo shirt, and a pair of old saddle-shoe golf spikes—the old kind with metal spikes that clacked even more loudly on the hardwood floors.

  “You’re golfing today?” I asked, dousing my coffee with half-and-half.

  “With Hull, like I said.”

  “I didn’t know you were serious about that.” I was a wife stirring coffee.

  “Why wouldn’t I be serious?” he asked. “Have you seen my watch?” Peter was terrible at looking for things. He was now standing in the middle of the living room with his hands on his hips, in a posture of defeat, glancing around.

  “Try the bedside table,” I said. He strode off to the bedroom. I called out loudly, “Where did you get those golf shoes? They look ancient.”

  “Oh, these, they’re my father’s. I had to borrow them.” He returned, watchless. “It wasn’t there. Do you think it just disappeared?”

  “No,” I said. “What happened to your spikes?”

  “I tried to make a shot out of the pond on the seventeen. Stumbled a little, up to my ankles. They dried all misshapen.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I took a stroke and still parred the hole.” He had his golf bag now up on one shoulder. “I’ve given up on the watch. Let me know if you find it,” by which he meant, Could you find it for me?

  “Have fun,” I said.

  “I will,” he said, kissing me distractedly on the cheek. “I will.” Was this what marriage relied on? Gestures of love? Perfunctory repetitions of kindnesses that make up for emptiness by being plentiful and reliable? I could still hear Elliot’s mother saying, “Marriage is a crock.” Hadn’t people lived side by side for years, drawing on these kindnesses so that they had the strength to make it through the unkind world? Didn’t these small kindnesses—like the little loving jabs passed between Dr. and Mrs. Fogelman—keep people alive? Maybe people were too demanding of love these days. Too entitled to some romantic vision of it. I was raised in a kind of Great Depression of Love. I didn’t go around demanding a bigger share. Shouldn’t we all be more contented? Why so greedy? Why did I want to be with Elliot Hull? Why did I think about him all the time? While living my life, while observing myself living my life, I was also wondering what it would be like if I were with Elliot—in this small moment and that. Didn’t I have enough? Didn’t I have more than anyone should ask for? I thought: What if I were with Elliot right now? I wouldn’t have to think this much about it. I could stop being a scientist—it was beginning to become a habit—a science project that was studying me.

  On the way home from work, I thought of Elliot and Peter bumping along the golf course in a white motorized cart, swinging their clubs, putting on the greens. Had Elliot really not played since high school? Was he out there making a fool of himself? Was Peter showing off? He was an excellent golfer. He’d once brought home five thousand dollars in some amateur tournament with a friend from college. Mainly, I imagined them talking about the weekend, Peter inching ever-so-jokingly toward some mention of me as Elliot’s pretend wife, about conjugal rights or something.

  If Eila was right and life wasn’t held together by anything anyway, I decided to just leave it alone. I made a decision not to ask about how the game went and that I wouldn’t call Elliot about it. I’d just let it sit.

  But when I got home from work—a little early due to a snafu; a couple had decided to sell their house and then to divorce and each thought the other should pay for staging— I found Elliot sitting on my sofa, drinking a beer, his foot in a bucket of ice, his pant leg cuffed to his knee. I was stunned. I hadn’t known if I’d ever see him again, but here he was, in the flesh, his dark curly hair, his arched eyebrows, and sweet dark eyes. I felt guilty all of a sudden, as if I’d conjured him myself out of a pure desire to see him again.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked. “What happened?”

  Peter then walked in from the kitchen, holding our plastic automatic ice-maker bucket. “An unfortunate run-in with a sprinkler head,” Peter said and then dumped the rest of the ice into the bucket. Elliot braced and grabbed his thigh. Ripken was being a steadfast nurse, lying at his feet, dutifully. “And bad timing on the part of a rogue squirrel.”

  “I flew out of the cart,” Elliot said.

  “Well, he didn’t really fly,” Peter said. “He’s wingless.”

  I walked up and saw a gash on Elliot’s shin. He lifted the leg and showed me his swollen ankle. “I never saw the squirrel,” he said.

  “You were looking the other way,” Peter said. “He was fast. It was a knee-jerk reaction to swerve.”

  “Start at the beginning,” I said.

  Elliot looked at Peter, giving him the floor.

  Peter took a swig of beer. “Well, we were traveling downhill, at a good clip. Elliot and I were just chatting it up. And he was looking off at those big fat houses. Well, you’re never out there, but there are these beautiful old homes. Then the squirrel darted in front of the cart. I swerved. Elliot wasn’t holding on …”

  “I wasn’t holding on,” Elliot said, as if to say How was I supposed to know to hold on?

  “And he flew out of the cart …”

  “Even though I’m wingless.”

  “And he landed pretty hard, twisting his ankle,” Peter said. “Then he gashed his leg on a sprinkler head. No way to see any of this coming. No way.”

  “Nope,” Elliot said, shaking his head. “It’s a mysterious chain of events. I can say that I never did see the squirrel.”

  “That squirrel was crazy,” Peter said. “Darting out in front of me like that. Jim saw it.”

  “Did he?” Elliot asked.

  “Yep.”

  “I’ll get some peroxide,” I said.

  “No, no,” Elliot said, wincing and pulling his foot from the bucket. “I’m fine. I’ll fix it up at home. I’m going to go.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “You can’t drive with a puffed ankle like that.”

  “It’s my left foot,” he said, unrolling the pant leg and picking up his shoe, the sock balled up inside of it. He could barely look at me. His eyes kept sweeping the floor. I had the feeling that he was afrai
d to look at me. What would happen if he did? Was there something he wanted to tell me? “I’ll be fine,” he said. “I drove here.”

  “I insisted on helping him get set up with ice, some Vicodin, a remote control,” Peter said. “I feel really bad about this, like it’s all my fault.”

  Elliot gave him a glance, as if to say, If it’s not your fault, whose is it? But quickly followed it with, “I’m fine.” He picked up his keys and wallet and limped to the door, still holding his shoe.

  “You’re not fine,” I said. I wasn’t sure what conversation had taken place in the golf cart, but I knew that Elliot hadn’t told Peter anything about us. Peter was too lighthearted. “I’ll help you to the car,” I said, grabbing his shoe.

  “Sorry it didn’t work out,” Peter said. “Maybe next time …”

  “I’ll be right back,” I said to Peter.

  “What am I going to do with all of this wasted ice?” he said, standing in the middle of the living room.

  I shut the door and caught up with Elliot, who’d already pushed the elevator button.

  “Wow,” he said. “That sucked.”

  The elevator doors opened. We stepped in.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, pushing the button for the lobby. “Was Peter awful to you?”

  “There was no squirrel,” he said. “And …” His sentence stalled and he shook his head.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, closing his eyes and resting his back against the wall of the elevator. “I should tell you …”

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” he whispered.

  We walked out of the lobby, into the back parking lot. I was apologizing all the way—for Peter, for his friends who could also be jerks, for the lack of a squirrel. I spotted Elliot’s jalopy, the one he’d bought off the friend who was in California now. I unlocked the door for him, put his shoe in the passenger’s seat. He lowered himself into the driver’s seat. “Gwen,” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t know how I’m going to do this.”

  “Do what?”

  “Lose you again. You’d think that the practice round in college would have warmed me up, prepared me somehow, but it’s worse this time. How could it be so much worse?”

  I was standing in the open door of his car. I said, “I don’t want to be lost,” I said. “I have no choice.”

  “You do have a choice.”

  “I made a commitment.”

  “But has he?”

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “I’m just looking for loopholes.” He winced as if he’d just had a pain shoot through his ankle, then shook his head. “I love you. I just want you to know that.”

  I loved him too, but this was the difference between us; I didn’t want him to know—not how much I felt, how strongly—the way, even in this moment, he made me feel weak and a little short of breath. “I don’t want to be lost,” I said again. This was as close as I could come.

  A few minutes later, I was back in the apartment. Peter had dumped the ice. Later, when I went to take a shower, I’d find the hardened lump of cubes cluttered in the drain of the tub. He was talking on the phone. He was saying, “Yes, yes. Sure. Got it,” talking in the shorthand you use for people at work. When he hung up, I said, “A rogue squirrel?”

  He shrugged. “Jim saw it too. A rogue squirrel. He’s lucky it wasn’t a goose. They’re all over that course and I’ve seen them attack a man when he’s down.”

  “So Elliot is lucky?” I said. “So lucky he got thrown from a golf cart and ripped up by a sprinkler head and twisted his ankle?”

  “Hey,” Peter said. “It’s a sport, you know. Golf is. Things happen.”

  “It’s a geriatric sport,” I said, staring at him, baffled.

  “There’s an undeniable physicality. You’d be surprised how many golf injuries I end up seeing.”

  “People dislocating their hip replacements doesn’t really count!” We were veering way off topic. Peter was very good at this distraction technique. It didn’t matter in this case, though. I was already resigned to letting it go. “I don’t want to talk about it,” I said.

  “He’s a terrible golfer. I don’t know when I’ve ever seen someone that bad. He doesn’t swing as much as he’s like trying to screw himself into the ground.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Peter sat down on the sofa with a grunt. “He’d be lucky to eventually be good enough to develop a snap-hook. He shot a 114 and he shaved!” He was borderline gleeful now.

  “I said I really don’t want to talk about it!” I shouted, walking to the bedroom.

  “Getting thrown from the cart is a rite of passage, Gwen,” Peter explained, “and he didn’t even get that part right.”

  I stopped in the middle of the hallway and turned and walked back into the living room. “So you threw him from the cart on purpose?” I said.

  “No,” he said, “not really. There was a squirrel.”

  “Mmhm,” I said. “Okay, then I really don’t want to talk about this—at all.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I don’t either, then.”

  “Fine.”

  “Fine.”

  FALL ROLLED IN QUICKLY. The days got shorter, and cool air started to tunnel into the apartment. The windows rattled with the wind. It was a gray, rainy season that seemed only occasionally punctuated by sun. My mother died during autumn, so that season always had a strange hold over me. With the cold chill and the leaves falling from trees, everything losing its greenery, it’s a death-haunted season anyway. This particular fall, I felt haunted not only in part by the dim memory of my mother but also by Vivian. When she confused me for her sister Giselle, I’d promised her that I would “tell him the truth.” Months had passed, and I still wasn’t living fearlessly. Every day I felt like I was betraying a trust, and it just got harder and harder to ignore Vivian’s goading in my mind.

  I wanted to call Elliot and ask about his mother. I waited for word, but no word came, and I wondered if she was still alive or if she’d died and Elliot hadn’t been able to call me or didn’t want to. I wondered if he was okay. In the middle of one obsessive night, I convinced myself that his mother hadn’t been dying at all, that she’d been faking it, for reasons beyond me. In the morning, I knew that was crazy, but still I considered looking up his course schedule at Johns Hopkins to watch him walk out of his class so that I could measure his expression, his gait—to make sure he was still alive, really. I went so far as to find his schedule online, but I avoided what would have proven to be a devastating blow to my self-respect. I resisted the urge.

  I thought of Elliot every day, but I didn’t mention his name. I didn’t mention him to Peter and Peter didn’t mention his name to me. I made sure not to ask Eila any big philosophical questions about my life—held together as it was or not. And I blatantly told Helen and Faith that I didn’t want to talk about Elliot Hull. He was “off the table.”

  “Can we do that?” Helen asked. “Can we take entire subjects off the table? Do we even have a table? Is that healthy?”

  Faith shrugged. “I’m fine with it. Consider Hull off the table as far as I’m concerned.”

  Helen looked at Faith and then back at me. “Fine,” she said. “But one day I might want to take something off the table and I want this to be a real precedent.”

  “But we can’t make a habit of it. It should be like the get-out-of-jail-free card. A one-time usage,” Faith suggested.

  “Fine,” I said. “Everyone gets one ‘off the table’ without question. And this one is mine.”

  Then one day I was pulling out of a grocery store parking space and I saw him pushing his cart toward the designated drop-off. It was late. He was pushing the cart and then he stood on its ledge, under the carriage, and he rode it, gliding across the empty spaces, drifting downhill. He was straight-faced, almost solemn, but so responsible. I never returned my carts.

  I thou
ght of driving up to him. But I wasn’t sure what I’d say. I’d wanted to know that he was alive. He was. I watched him stuff his hands into his pockets and walk back in the direction he’d come. He no longer had a limp. His ankle had healed. Finally, he arrived at his jalopy. There, in the passenger’s seat, was a woman with a pretty face and short brown hair. Her mouth started moving as soon as he sat down. Was she someone he could have a conversation with that would last a lifetime? He was nodding, then pulling out of the spot and merging into traffic, then gone.

  And I sat there, as if I’d had the wind knocked out of me. Was he seeing someone—someone he could buy a cartful of groceries with instead of just one lime? Was he over me, just like that? I wasn’t over him. I wasn’t any closer to getting over him than I had been on the rowboat on the lake. I eventually straightened up and shook my head and said aloud, “Good for him,” but I didn’t believe the words myself. I started to say them again, with more conviction, but my throat cinched. My mouth folded in on the words.

  Maybe Elliot had moved on. I couldn’t accept this, but I was trying. Still, I couldn’t let everything about that time at the Hulls’ house slip away. I decided that I had to confront my father. I couldn’t let another day pass.

  The following Sunday, I went to my father’s house for lunch. It was a few days after his birthday.

  My father hated anything that seemed close to a celebration for him. If I mentioned his birthday in the weeks before it, he issued stern warnings not to celebrate. I was always forced to ignore the actual day and do something after the fact and purposefully low-key. When Peter saw me making a German chocolate cake—my father’s favorite—from a box, he’d offered to come along, adding, “Though I know it would throw him into an attack of unworthiness.” This was true.

  “He can barely handle a box cake made in his honor,” I reminded him. Bringing Peter would make it seem almost like a party, and my father would spend the visit apologizing to us for having gone to too much trouble.

  I brought the German chocolate cake. My dad made his specialty—fried salmon cakes. The salmon came from a can. I was anxious and not hungry. I watched him eat, and before he took a bite of his cake, I told him to make a wish. We didn’t have candles.