American Wife (58 page)

Ella said, “Did you love him more than Daddy?”

I blinked. “Oh, sweetie, it’s not like that. It’s not—Andrew wasn’t my boyfriend. We were friends, and I think we kept track of each other over the years, but we never dated. Because we came from the same place and were in the same grade, you could say we knew each other well, but that doesn’t compare to the way you know someone when you live with them. We know almost everything about Daddy, don’t we? What his snores sound like and which is his favorite shirt and how many ice cubes he likes in his glass of water at dinner.”

Ella laughed—Charlie’s snoring was a source of unfailing amusement to her.

“Just like I know almost everything about you,” I said. “It’s because I’m your mother and I love you and you’re my favorite girl in the whole world.” I leaned forward and kissed the top of her head, and as I did, I thought of what Charlie had said to me in the early morning after our wedding night, when I’d awakened from my dream of Andrew:
I want to be the love of your life.
He had gotten his way, hadn’t he? Even with the two of us staying in different places, my moods were defined by him, by the latest thoughts I’d had about the hope or futility of our future together. Kissing Joe Thayer, however briefly and clumsily, had given me a glimpse of an idea that came back to me now—that I could not in my lifetime love another man. Not so much due to my loyalty to Charlie as due to a sort of weariness, a lack of interest in starting anew. I loved my husband out of affection and also out of habit, I loved him with my wife’s heart, and with my secret heart, my dream heart, I loved Andrew Imhof. I had no other love to spare, not of the romantic variety. If I went through with divorcing Charlie, I wouldn’t remarry; I simply couldn’t envision it, and I found myself wondering then if living alone, being single again, would be harder than putting up with him. Even putting up with him might be easier than not putting up with him—being the beleaguered wife, propelled forward, given a sense of purpose, by my troublesome husband. Whereas if I were single, I would struggle financially, I would have to delicately navigate interacting with the Blackwells and with Charlie himself, and there would be acrimony of an explicit rather than a suppressed kind.

What I wanted to know (it was useless, and adolescent as well) was if I had left the house a little earlier or a little later that September night in 1963, or if Fred Zurbrugg’s party had been called off, or if I hadn’t argued with Dena and driven alone, or if our argument had left me so despondent I’d decided to skip the party altogether—if the accident had been prevented, would Andrew and I have become a couple, and if we’d become a couple would we have remained one, and would we eventually have married? This had long been the story I’d told myself, and if it was a fiction, it had nevertheless felt true—it had felt like the sort of truth you don’t need to defend because, in spite of all arguments against it, it cannot be diminished. But now I was doubtful. I was sick of Riley after less than a month; I was ready to go home, because home wasn’t here. If I had married Andrew, would I have been content to lead a smaller life, to stay forever in a place like this? Was it venturing into the world that had sharpened my appetite for what the world offered? Or if I’d stayed here, a farmer’s wife, would I have felt stifled no matter what?

“I’m praying right now for Andrew Imhof,” Ella said.

I switched off the light. “That’s sweet of you, ladybug.”

IN RILEY, THE
Protestant cemetery and the Catholic cemetery were side by side, about a mile southwest of the river, and in the morning, I drove first to St. Mary’s, the Catholic one. At Buhler’s florist, I’d bought two bouquets of white tulips, and I placed one on Andrew’s gravestone, which was a flat gray granite rectangle set into the grass. It was a beautiful late June morning, about seventy degrees with a light breeze, and no other visitors were in the cemetery, though a man on a riding lawn mower was cutting the grass in the distance. Looking for Andrew’s grave, I had passed some headstones marked by dried flowers, fake flowers, whirligigs, or wind socks, though most, like his, were undecorated. I stood there looking down at his name and the dates. I hadn’t attended his funeral, nor had I ever been to his grave—I probably wouldn’t have come on this trip, if not for my conversation with Ella—and it was jarring to see. I would say that it was like proof of something, except that there was nothing left to prove.

I wished in this moment for greater faith, for a prayer to recite that would feel sincere, but none came to me. I crouched, touching the cool stone as I had never really touched Andrew, and I thought,
I hope you’re at peace. I’m so sorry.
The only answer that came back was the buzz of the lawn mower, but I hadn’t expected otherwise.

I returned to where I’d parked and drove to Grace Cemetery, the Protestant one; it was probably half a mile from one entrance to another, and I could have gone on foot, but the roads here didn’t have sidewalks, and it would be too darkly ironic to get hit crossing between two graveyards. In Grace, I knew where my father’s and grandmother’s headstones were: Unlike Andrew’s, they were upright, my father’s gray and slightly curved at the top like a headboard, my grandmother’s similar in shape but a polished gray-mottled pink.
PHILLIP WARREN LINDGREN, 1923–1976, BELOVED SON, HUSBAND, AND FATHER. And for my grandmother, EMILIE WARREN LINDGREN
, 1896–1988. For my grandmother, my mother had selected a back-ground that was like an open book with blank pages—generally meant to evoke a Bible, I assumed, but my mother had said to me, “Since Granny liked to read,” and I knew she hadn’t meant religious texts. The soil at my grandmother’s grave was still dark and moist; she had been buried just over a month before, and I continued to feel that I was due to see her again shortly. I set the flowers between their headstones. Although I didn’t know what I believed about souls or an afterlife, it comforted me that now they had each other for company. My grandmother had outlived her son, her only child, by twelve years, and I imagined outliving Ella; it was an unbearable thought.

I would not have asked my father, had he been alive, what I ought to do about my marriage; he wouldn’t have liked such an intimate question. But I could guess what his advice would have been. As for my grandmother, no guesswork was necessary—she had told me straight out. And here in Grace Cemetery, it seemed shameful that I had ever considered otherwise, that I still was acting as if there was a choice to be made. Perhaps it was living around rich people—perhaps it was becoming a rich person myself—that had caused me to forget that life was hard work. Or perhaps it was the decade, the culture; it didn’t matter. The fact was that I had forgotten. But almost eleven years earlier, I’d taken a vow, made a public promise. I thought of my father’s motto
—Whatever you are, be a good one—
and though once my identity had been defined by being Phillip and Dorothy Lindgren’s daughter, Emilie Lindgren’s granddaughter, now I was Charlie Blackwell’s wife, Ella Blackwell’s mother. All of these people, each in a different way, would be deeply disappointed if I let my marriage fail. What choice did I have, really, except to go back—to try, as my mother had once made the decision to do with my father, to meet my husband with kindness?

BACK ON AMITY
Lane, my mother passed me a note with Lars’s handwriting on it:
Call Yvonne Sutton as soon as possible,
and then a seven-digit number. When I called, I could hear Antoine crying in the background. “Alice, we’re thrilled about Jessica going to Ella’s school,” Yvonne said. “I don’t know what you did to get them to give her that scholarship, but bless you.”

“Don’t think of Biddle as Ella’s school—it’s Jessica’s now, too, and, Yvonne, she’s the one who got herself in. We’re so excited. If you have any questions about any of it, please feel free to call.”

“That’s real generous of you, and I almost forgot, thanks for the books, too—I don’t think Jessie’s looked up once since you dropped them off.” I started to respond, but Yvonne continued, her tone changing. “Now, unfortunately, there’s another reason I’m calling. Alice, Mama won’t tell you herself, so I’ve got to be the one to say it—she can’t stay another night in Maronee. God knows I don’t mean to stick my nose in you two’s personal business, but it just isn’t right for a sixty-three-year-old lady to be babysitting a grown man.”

“You mean that Miss Ruby—” I hesitated. “I’m embarrassed to say I’m not quite sure what’s going on. Has Charlie asked Miss Ruby to stay with him at our house?”

“Not at your house—at Mr. and Mrs. Blackwell’s. Alice, Mama would do anything for Charlie, he’s had her wrapped around his little finger since way back, but she’s too old for this. She needs to sleep in her own bed.”

Of course—of course Charlie wasn’t staying on Maronee Drive. He was staying at his parents’, and Miss Ruby was staying with him in her room off the kitchen. She was probably also cooking him breakfast and dinner.

“You’re absolutely right,” I said. “I’m sorry, and I’m glad you called. I’m not sure if your mother has ever mentioned that Charlie—This will sound very silly, but he’s afraid of the dark.”

“Oh, I know.” Yvonne laughed. “Believe me, we know all about the monsters under Charlie B’s bed.”

“I won’t deny that he’s unusual,” I said.

“I try not to judge.” Yvonne’s tone implied that she wasn’t succeeding, at least in this case. “I’m just concerned about Mama. Now, when I talked to Jadey, she said she doesn’t know when you’re coming home, but she’s fine having Charlie there, so if you want to call him, or you want me to call him, either way. He’d probably listen more to you, but if—”

“I promise that I’ll take care of it,” I said. “Everyone will sleep in their own beds tonight.”

BACK IN MARONEE
, I dropped Ella at Jadey’s—Jadey shrieked with joy when she saw me, and agreed to take the girls to the pool if I promised to go on a walk with her that evening—and then I went to our house to sort the mail and listen to the phone messages, to throw out the rotting food from the refrigerator and empty the trash and make our bed from what was, I presumed, the one night Charlie had slept, or tried to sleep, in it. Then I drove to Harold and Priscilla’s, where Miss Ruby was watching
The People’s Court
on the small television in the kitchen. I told her to go home and take the next week off—I would speak with Priscilla—and I collected Charlie’s belongings. He had been sleeping not in an upstairs bedroom but on the couch in his father’s study, which was nearer to Miss Ruby’s room off the kitchen, and she had obviously been tidying his possessions. I took the alarm clock off the coffee table, folded the sleeping bag, which was from our house, and retrieved his toothbrush and toothpaste from the sink in the powder room under the stairs. I surveyed the second floor, but Charlie seemed to have been showering elsewhere—either at the country club or back at our house.

By this point, it was after four in the afternoon, and I drove to County Stadium. Finding an unlocked entrance, a non-game entrance, took some time, but eventually I saw a maintenance man leaving through nondescript metal double doors. He led me back in, and inside, I ran into another man, an older fellow who may have been the third-base coach, and that gentleman directed me to a third man, this one in a short-sleeved shirt and gray slacks, and after I’d explained separately to all of them who I was and asked where I might find my husband, at last I reached Charlie’s office. It was smaller than I’d imagined, with windows onto the hallway but not to the outside; it was about the same size as the principal’s anteroom, where the secretary sat, in the lower school of Biddle. Charlie had hung nothing on the walls, and the surface of his desk was mostly empty, with a few stacks of paper. He was sitting with his legs up on the desk and his ankles crossed—he wore black wing tips—and he held open a manila file folder and was reading.

The door was open, but I knocked on the aluminum frame. I said, “Am I interrupting?”

When he looked up, his expression was one of surprised pleasure, and also of wariness. He didn’t stand, but he pulled his legs from the desk and set them on the floor. “This is unexpected.”

Given how breezy he’d been when we’d spoken on the phone, the thought had crossed my mind that maybe he’d changed his mind about wanting us—wanting me—to return. I said, “How are you doing?” Before he could answer, I added, “I think it’s time for Ella and me to come home. Do you agree?”

He bowed his head. Was he considering the question? A nervousness came over me. When almost a minute had passed in silence, I said, “Charlie?”

He lifted his head at last, and he seemed choked up. “You’ve caught me off guard, is all,” he said. “Of course you should come home, absolutely. Lindy, I owe you a tremendous apology. I’ve behaved dishonorably as a husband.”

“What? I—No, Charlie, that’s not what I’m saying. Obviously, we both know that things can improve, but . . .” I trailed off; he was shaking his head.

“The Holy Spirit was working through you, Lindy. The Lord caused you to leave so that I’d see my sins and repent, and there’s no doubt about it, I
have
sinned. But I’m a new man. I’ve been reborn, and if God can forgive me, I hope you can, too. I want you to know I haven’t had a drop to drink in eight days.”

I half expected him to smirk, to lapse into laughter, saying,
Just kidding—you fucking believed me! Admit it, you believed me!
Except that he didn’t say it, and he wasn’t kidding.

“Is this—” I paused. “Jadey told me you’ve been spending time with someone named Reverend Randy?”

“He’s an extraordinary man, Lindy. You’ll be very impressed when you meet him. He’s thought long and hard about these issues, and he knows the struggle, he understands how hard it is
not
to sin, but boy, it’s inspiring to hear him talk about the rewards of accepting Jesus as your Savior.”

“How do you know him?”

“Funny thing, but it’s Miss Ruby who introduced us.”

“Oh, is he—is he black?”

Charlie grinned. “You ought to see the look on your face. No, Miss Racially Enlightened, he’s not black.”