Page 29 of Such a Good Wife

WITH THE KIDS NOW at school and Collin busy working on a relocation of the “goddamn vibrating hospital,” I find I have many hours a day to myself. There are many things I could be doing. I should actually finish writing the piece I’m working on like I said I would. Collin was gracious in helping me pursue it and now I can’t seem to concentrate for more than a few minutes on anything without my mind wandering to forbidden thoughts, Luke’s body on mine, the passion I haven’t felt in so long.

I should be teaching myself to cook something besides frozen chicken. I should get a head start on Ben’s Halloween costume. He wants to be a Ninja Turtle. I should catch up on laundry. I should do anything other than what I decide to do.

On Monday morning, I hire a day nurse and pay her cash to stop in midday and take care of Claire for me. When I think about the fact that Claire can’t tell on me and that’s the only reason I’m getting away with it, I feel sick. But I do it anyway. Then I show up at Luke’s. I can’t help myself. I don’t help myself.

I know he never thought he’d see me again after I left on Saturday night. It should have been that way. Everything I set into motion by not staying away is my fault. He swallows me in his arms, we spend the day naked in his bed, making love until we are too exhausted to do it again. Then I go back the next two days in a row.

I let him deluge me with care; I take in all of it as if it is deserved. We sun ourselves by the pool, and I read fashion magazines he bought for me. Sometimes, while I fall asleep on a deck chair with my glass of Chablis, he works on his book—leaning over a laptop, just the way I imagined him. We watch documentaries and romantic comedies; he tries to cook for me, but can only produce offerings of burnt pancakes or crunchy spaghetti.

We tell each other everything. I knew about his father, who wanted him to be a navy man like himself and refuses to be proud of his success. He talks about his depression he takes meds for and how it’s changed him—how some days he feels the despair encroaching, recognizing the enemy as it approaches, hopeless to battle it, even when he thinks he’s perfectly happy. I rest my forehead on his shoulder as I listen. I tell him about my first love, the way the boy kissed me tenderly at first, but never touched my body, only pushed into me, a flat hand on the wall above my head, groaning until he was finished—how it confused me until he came out as gay a few years later. He knows I have a husband I dearly love...just in a different way than whatever this is.

I lie across his bed. A rainstorm has brought in cooler air and it sweeps in through the open window; he leans up on one elbow and traces the contours of my back with the finger of his free hand as I lie facing away, watching the drizzle make trails down the windowpane. He speaks lovers’ words and I feel the wet under his eyes when he presses his face into my neck, already mourning the loss of when this will end.

At home in the evenings, the burner phone is on silent and hidden inside a tampon box under my side of the sink. Before bed, I close the bathroom door and run the water, so I have a couple of minutes to read the texted love letters from him. I’m getting very skilled at lying and acting completely normal. It scares me, how Collin and the kids are the same. No odd looks, no suspicion. All because I’ve become a good liar and cheater. The house is the same, the crack in the front stair that needs repair, the TV always on in the living room as Rachel and Ben fight over the remote and do homework, cross-legged at the coffee table, Ralph begging for food under the dinner table. How can this all be the same when I feel like my life has changed so completely?

One evening, after spending the last four days in his arms, he texts and says he wants to stay through the winter and postpone his trip until spring maybe. I don’t know what to say to this.

Rachel comes home in tears, telling me that we absolutely have to let her friend Katie stay over for a few days.

“Honey, what happened?” I hand her a tissue and sit beside her on the sofa.

“Her mom is taking her away.”

“What do you mean?”

“It didn’t even matter that she got the part, her mom is so—She ran away. I’m being honest here, okay, so you have to help her and let her come over. She needs somewhere to go. She’s, like, freaking out.”

My daughter is losing her best friend. I think about the reality of Katie running away. If she really ran, she’d probably be sex-trafficked or in a drug house within a week or two. She’d go to New Orleans, no doubt. This could be Rachel if anyone found out what I was doing and it tore up our family like that.

“Honey, her parents need to know where she is.”

“Mom, no!” she sobs.

“We can’t hide her from her parents. Do you understand that they would probably file a missing persons report and a police force would be spending time trying to find her? That’s a crime. We need to make sure she’s safe and her parents know where she is.”

“You don’t understand!” she screams.

“Rach, I know you want to help her and that this is hard, but that’s not the answer. Do you know where she is now?”

“I’m not telling anyone. You were supposed to be cool and help us. This is such bullshit!” She runs into her room and slams the door, violently. Collin comes home and walks in through the garage door just in time to be startled by the slam of her door.

“What’s goin’ on?” He puts his things down and kisses me on the cheek as I explain about Rachel wanting to harbor a runaway.

“Should I talk to her?” he asks.

“I’d give her a little time.”

“I know Katie’s dad a little from the country club. Jerry. Sounds like a really ugly situation. His wife drained the joint bank account when she found out. Says he lived in his car for a week before she moved out.”

“Wow. Well, Rachel says she’s taking the kids away. Thinks she’ll never see Katie again,” I say, and Rachel comes out of her room to try and manipulate her father. She puts her arms around his waist and pouts. It sometimes works, but he gives me a look like he’s got this.

“Daddy,” she whines, “can I talk to you?”

And with that she whisks him off to her room to retell the story with extra tears. It hits me, hard, that he’s good cop. Not only would the kids probably choose him, he’s the breadwinner. I feel weak-kneed, suddenly, and sit. I have no job. All the assets are joint. I would never drain our account and be more selfish and horrible than I’ve already been. I would single-handedly destroy our family and lose everything if anyone found out. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I have known this, but I’m crippled by how close I am to this blowing up the way it did with Katie’s parents.

My phone buzzes on the table. It’s Lacy. I pick it up.

“Lacy, hi.” I should have sent a text or something the next day, apologizing again for my abrupt departure from the bar, but I’ve been consumed. I haven’t even thought about her. She’s crying. “What’s wrong?”

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