American Wife (32 page)

In the ensuing silence, I could hear the lilt of the tiny waves hitting the shore below us, and one of the little boys in the grass out front said, “But it’s
mine.
” And then on the porch there was a delighted sort of roaring, and I quickly realized, though I had trouble believing it, that the roar had come from Mrs. Blackwell. Soon everyone else joined in, guffawing and applauding. I was so shocked that I could have cried—they’d have been tears of astonishment, not of sadness or hurt—but I knew that it was very important not to. I kept my head up, smiling in a glazed kind of way. I didn’t look at Charlie because I was afraid I’d see a gleeful expression. I wondered, had the children heard? Had Miss Ruby?

“Again!” Mrs. Blackwell cried. “Encore!”

And in case anyone had missed a word, Arthur began, “ ‘Nymphomaniacal Alice . . . ’ ”

When he’d finished, Mrs. Blackwell, still smiling joyfully, said, “I defy anyone who says I don’t have the cleverest sons in Christendom. Arty, you’ve outdone yourself.”

“Far be it from me to offer praise to one of my younger brothers,” Ed said, “but that was masterful.” (And here Ed was supposed to be the uptight one.)

Uncle Trip nudged me. “It’s not every day you get a poem written in your honor, is it?”

I gave a spluttery fake laugh that was the best I could manage.

Charlie and I were still standing side by side, not looking at each other, but I was pretty sure he was grinning while speaking through clenched teeth when he said, “You’re horrified, right?”

“Arthur didn’t write that.” I was barely moving my lips, either. “I first heard it from a boy named Roy Ziemniak in 1956.”

Charlie chuckled. “Beg, borrow, or steal,” he said. “That’s Arthur.” Then he said, “You’re doing well. I know this isn’t easy.” He turned to me, and we looked at each other straight on, and his expression wasn’t gleeful; it was tentative. His face in that moment was very familiar to me; perhaps this was in contrast to everyone else I’d just met, but I was surprised by the familiarity. Charlie’s brown eyes and the crinkles at their corners, his bristly wavy light brown hair, his light pink lips, dry right now, which I had spent a good deal of the last seven weeks pressing my own lips against—his features were comforting. It was much harder not to touch him than it would have been to touch him, to set my palm against his cheek or neck, to lean in and kiss him, to wrap my arms around his body and be hugged back. It was comforting also to know that eventually—if not tonight, then soon, and for a long time to come—I’d again be alone with him and we could talk about everyone else or not even talk but just be together in the aftermath of interacting with these other people. I felt so lucky, it seemed practically a miracle, that of everybody on the porch, he was the person I was paired off with, he was my counterpart. Not Arthur, thank God, or John or Ed, but Charlie—Charlie was the one who was mine. Certainly he could be a joker, too, but I felt that he had a more sympathetic heart than his brothers, that he understood more about the world, about human behavior; Charlie’s joking seemed a decision rather than a reflex. (Of course I later wondered: When you are the object of a person’s affection, do you naturally credit him with a sympathetic heart and an understanding of the world? Perhaps your impression is right only insofar as it applies to you; in your presence, he is indeed possessed of these qualities for the very reason that you
are
the object of his affection. He is not observant so much as observant of you, not kind so much as kind toward you.)

As Charlie and I regarded each other, surrounded by the chatter and clinking of the Blackwell cocktail hour, it occurred to me that if I had visited Halcyon before he and I had gotten engaged, there was a good chance we would not have done so. In the contexts of our families, the differences between us loomed large. But in this moment it seemed a good thing that I hadn’t known what I was getting into; I was glad it was too late.

WE WALKED TO
the clubhouse for dinner in a sloppy sort of caravan, and beyond a grove of pine trees, another compound appeared on our right, a grouping of houses whose sizes and layout were similar to those of the Blackwells. Apparently, Charlie’s family owned the northern-most plot of land; at the next large house, a throng of men, women, and children was emerging, led by a silver-haired octogenarian who dragged his right foot, leaned on a hooked cane of dark wood, and wore navy blue pants embroidered with little green turtles. “Harold, I won’t have you eating all the sweet-potato puffs,” he called in a plummy tone, and Harold Blackwell called back, “Wouldn’t dream of it, Rumpus!” Or at least this was what I thought Harold said, but I doubted my own ears until I ended up next to this same man in the clubhouse dining room. Four long tables extended north, south, east, and west from the center of the room—they were like a tremendous cross—and the tables were not divided by family, as I’d have imagined (I later realized they couldn’t have been, because there were four tables and five families), but rather, by the clucking, seemingly arbitrary instructions of the matriarchs. Mrs. Blackwell directed the grandchildren toward one table, her older sons and their wives to scattered points, and then she turned her attention to Charlie and me. “Chas, go sit by Mrs. deWolfe, because she’s dying to hear your theory about Jimmy Connors. Alice, you’re right here.” She pointed to the second-to-last place at one table. “I find it so tiresome when couples are seated side by side, don’t you?” I nodded, unable to remember the last place I’d been that had featured assigned seating. White linen covered the tables, and there were full place settings. The china and silverware all were nice enough, if far from new-looking, but the clubhouse as a whole shared the same worn quality I’d found in the Alamo—the curtains, of forest-green cotton, were faded, the hardwood floor was scratched, the chairs were of the not particularly comfortable wooden sort you might have found with a dormitory desk. A large vase of purple hydrangea sat at the intersection of the four tables, and over the mantel was a handsome oil painting of dark water: Lake Michigan, quite possibly.

When we’d all taken our seats—the men waited for the women, I observed, and the women first seated their children—the man next to me, the wearer of the turtle pants, extended his hand. “Rumpus Higginson,” he said.

“Alice Lindgren.” As we shook, I felt slightly proud of myself for not laughing, not even smiling or letting my lips twitch. (T
WO
weeks later, back in Madison, I picked up the
Wisconsin State Journal
to find a front-page article about the expansion of Wall Bank—a rival of Wisconsin State Bank & Trust, my father’s employer for over thirty years—and a small photo accompanied the article, a photo that was grainy and no larger than a postage stamp but still recognizable to me, of a man identified as Leslie J. Higginson; he was, apparently, the bank’s founder. This meant my father surely would have heard of him, though I doubted that my father had ever known he answered to Rumpus.)

We had a first course of vichyssoise served in shallow white bowls with a sprinkling of chives. Over the soup, Rumpus, or Mr. Higginson—really, I had little idea how to address anyone—said, “Have you spent much time in Door County, Allison?”

I did not correct him. “As a matter of fact, I haven’t made it here before, but it lives up to its reputation.”

“You couldn’t buy a better day.” Rumpus shook his head. “Absolutely gorgeous.”

On being assigned this seat, I had wondered if Mrs. Blackwell might be exiling me, but she had sat across the table and one over (to keep an eye on me? But no, I was being silly). She said then, “Rump, tell me it isn’t true about Cecily and Gordon. If they move to Los Angeles, we have no hope of seeing them again.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Rumpus protested. “A flight to California is nothing for an inveterate traveler like you, Priscilla.”

She shook her head. “The last time I was in Los Angeles, I said to myself, ‘Enough is enough.’ Terrible traffic, lousy food, and the staff at the Biltmore was appallingly incompetent. It claims to be a world-class city, but I find it quite provincial.” I know there are people who would not believe that a person from Wisconsin would dare to make such a remark; they are wrong. Mrs. Blackwell was saying, “I saw Cecily down in Sea Island last March, and I said, ‘Cecily, if the two of you even think of defecting to the West Coast, that’s the last you’ll hear from Harold and me.’ ”

“It’s really Gordon, though, isn’t it? I know he’s keen to cultivate relationships with Asian investors, which makes it a good deal more convenient. . . ”

The conversation proceeded in much this way as we moved on to the main course of broiled chicken. They discussed another couple named the Bancrofts who, I inferred, lived in Milwaukee, were renovating their kitchen, and had had the misfortune of hiring a feckless contractor; they discussed a couple named the LeGrands, whose son was in his second year of medical school at Dartmouth, though Mrs. Blackwell questioned whether he had “the goods”—she tapped her temple—to earn his degree (“His grades at UW were worse than Chas’s at Princeton!” she exclaimed); and finally, they discussed a Viennese cellist who had been playing with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra for the last several months and staying with Emily and Will Higginson, who were Rumpus’s son and daughter-in-law. “The Italians say that houseguests are like fish.” Mrs. Blackwell smirked. “After three days, they start to smell.” (Of course I quickly calculated that if Charlie and I had arrived on a Friday and were leaving on a Monday, that was no more than three days, was it? Though only I was a guest; Charlie was family.)

During the whole of dinner, I nodded at what seemed to be the appropriate intervals, I smiled when they smiled and laughed when they laughed, I even answered a question about my own taste in music—“Allison, do you prefer the classical or romantic era?” Rumpus inquired, and I said, “I’ve always enjoyed Mahler’s Fifth”—and at the same time, I became first tipsy and then solidly drunk in a way I had never been in my entire life. The waiters and waitresses, most of whom appeared to be about fourteen years old, refilled our wine-glasses frequently. On my second trip to the bathroom, I left just as coffee was being served with dessert, and the walls shifted as I walked.

There was a sitting room outside the dining room, and both its walls and those in the halls leading to the bathroom were densely covered with framed photos, the majority of them black-and-white: Halcyon inhabitants holding fish or playing tennis (the latter activity featured action shots and posed ones, with the players crossing their racquets in front of their bodies). One picture was of Mrs. Blackwell gripping the hand of a toddler who might well have been Charlie, standing on the porch of what I believed to be this very building. Mrs. Blackwell had not been beautiful, but she’d been dark-haired and attractive, the skin on her face smooth and unlined, a canny glint in her eye. On my return from the bathroom, I was studying the photo when a woman appeared from nowhere and threw herself into my arms. “I am
so
excited to meet you!” she cried. She spoke in a drawl that, like Charlie’s, was vaguely southern.

Even when she’d extracted herself from our nonmutual embrace, she held tightly to my upper arms, looking at me with great enthusiasm. She had white-blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, big front teeth, and tanned skin; she was pretty, but in this moment she was also far too physically close. “And I heard about that
raunchy
poem Arthur wrote, and I am
mortified.
I was with the baby in Gin Rummy, but if I had been there, I would
never
have let him do that. You must think we’re the most
disgraceful
family in the entire
world.
”

Then her eyes widened, and I do not exaggerate when I say that she proceeded to shriek. “Oh, you don’t even know who I am! Oh my stars!” She began to laugh, bringing a hand to her chest. “I’m Jadey! Arthur’s wife! I’m Jadey Blackwell! Oh, Alice, you have to forgive my terrible manners!”

“What a pleasure to meet you.” I could hear the expansiveness in my voice, a decidedly unfamiliar tone. “But your husband forgot there’s an alternate ending for the limerick.” Both the words
alternate
and
limerick
had been daunting to pronounce, and I was proud that I had surmounted them. “What he said was ‘And bits of her tits down in Dallas.’ But also, it can go ‘And her anus in Buckingham Palace.’ Did you know you’re married to a plagiarizer?”

Jadey peered at me more closely, then whispered. “Oh my Lord, are you
drunk
?” I shook my head, but she was saying, “Oh, I would be, too! Oh, you must be just beside yourself! I can only imagine what this weekend is like for you. They tease you
so much,
don’t they? My first year of marriage, I was on the brink of tears the whole time, and I had grown
up
with the Blackwells! Oh, I just hated
all
of them, and after Arthur
made
me marry him, I thought to myself, Jadey, are you crazy? You
knew
that family was a bunch of hooligans!”

Was Jadey crazy? I had been in her company for about a minute, and already, I felt that I could have answered this question accurately.

“Stay
right here,
” she said. “I’m getting Charlie. You poor baby, you’re drunk as a skunk.”

Because I was indeed drunk, I didn’t mind standing there doing nothing; I gazed up at the silver trophy vase sitting on the mantel above the fireplace—it was about a foot tall—and by the time Charlie emerged from the dining room, Jadey just behind him, I was holding the trophy in my arms, squinting down at it. “Where’s your name?” I asked Charlie, and he seemed both amused and perturbed.

“Let’s put that back where it belongs, sticky fingers.” He eased the trophy from my hands and returned it to the mantel, then said to Jadey, “Tell Maj you think Alice has whatever the baby is sick with.”

Jadey made a face. “Colic, Chas?”

He waved his hand dismissively. “Make something up. I’m taking her back to Itty-Bitty.”

Jadey set her hands on the slopes where my shoulders became my neck; the effect of her standing like this was halfway between a babushka pinching your cheeks and a lover moving in for a kiss. “Alice, we are going to be
best
friends,” she said. She dropped her voice. “Ginger and Nan are
no fun.
They mean well, but they’re worrywarts. But I heard about you”—she was talking louder again, and more quickly—“and I just knew right away. I said to myself, ‘Alice sounds like my kind of girl.’ ”