Page 11 of The Wife

I googled my name and Spencer’s—using both Powell and Mullen—searching for any mentions within the last twenty-four hours. No one had dragged us into the story. Not yet, anyway.

But if some random Internet user had already posted the name of Rachel Sutton, how long would it be before people who thought they knew something about me jumped into the fray?

Spencer had a pillow pulled over his head to block the light seeping around the window shade. He let out a moan when I sat at the foot of his bed. My son had a way of treating each morning as a theater audition.

“Do I need to remind you that little girls in other parts of the world have literally died trying to get an education? Time for school, mister.”

He squinted up at me from beneath his shaggy hair. “Normal moms say, Get the fuck up before I kill you.”

This is my precocious son’s idea of “normal.” “I prefer guilt trips to death threats. Get up. But we need to talk for a second. Some kids at the school might be talking about Dad.” Spencer had started calling Jason Dad after our first anniversary. We never asked why. We were just grateful.

“Loretta’s mom has an Academy Award, and Henry’s dad is literally like a musical genius. Trust me, no one talks about Dad.”

Ah, the joys of a private school in Manhattan.

“There’s a story going around the Internet. Someone accused him of something. It’ll get cleared up, but I need you to try to block it all out today at school.”

“What do you mean, he wasaccused?”

There was no way I could keep the details from my son, not with the 24/7 media cycle. “It’s a student from the university. College students can overreact, Spencer.”

I started babbling from there. I told him that sometimes extremely troubled students found their way into the university. That his father had done nothing but try to help her by supervising an internship. That teachers have conflicts with students all the time, but Dad had the additional complication of being a public person. It was possible the student was looking for attention at his expense.

“So what are people going to say?”

I searched his pale brown eyes, which peered out beneath wisps of hair that should have been cut two weeks ago. My son was too old to be treated like a child, but he was young compared to his peers. His friend Henry, for example—son of the “musical genius”—had two nannies, a driver, and a bodyguard at his disposal, and saw his parents twice a month. These kids would pull no punches.

“That a student accused your father of inappropriate behavior.”

“What? Like... sex?”

I said I didn’t know exactly. That it was a misunderstanding. That I only told him in case someone mentioned it at school.

“And this is, like,online?” He started to get up, probably heading for the phone I made him dock downstairs in the kitchen, one of the phone-related Mom Rules, along with divulging his passcode, asking permission before sharing photographs of others, and, most controversially, all phones in airplane mode while the car is moving.

I tried not to think about the other parents whispering in their kitchens right now about my husband. Or the NYU students texting links to one another during class. Or the people I used to know on the East End, gloating that my perfect life in the city hadn’t worked out quite so well after all.

“This young woman is obviously troubled, Spencer. Deeply. And your father’s been trying to help her, okay?” I was hinting at facts I knew nothing about, but needed to offer some kind of explanation for what was happening. Troubled girl gets fixated on successful mentor seemed, sadly, to work.

“Mom, I can’t go to school. You have to let me stay home.”

I walked to the bathroom in the hallway and turned on the water in the shower. It took forever to heat. “You can’t stay home, or people might assume he’s guilty. He’s your father, Spencer, and you’re not a child anymore. We have to protect our family.”

7

While Spencer was in the shower, I tried Jason again. I hung up when I heard the familiar “You’ve reached Jason Powell...” I’d already left two voice mails and three text messages.

I flipped on the small television hanging beneath our kitchen counter, keeping the volume low to make sure I’d hear Spencer on the stairs in time to turn it off. I flipped toNew Day. Jason initially became a semiregular on the show due to our friendship with one of the hosts, Susanna Coleman. Now that Jason’s commentary was widely sought after, he still appeared about once a month, primarily out of loyalty.

Susanna and her cohost Eric were in the studio’s kitchen, flanking a chef I recognized from one of those cable cooking shows. The chef was saying, “See? Perfect al dente,” while Susanna and Eric attempted to sample the supposedly perfect spaghetti strands with grace.

Susanna was nodding in agreement until her mouth was free to speak. “You’re my hero. I always overcook my pasta.”

Had Jason already been on the air this morning? What was he supposed to talk about today? He had brought it up the night before, while I was trying to read Spencer’s paper about James Baldwin’sGo Tell It on the Mountain. My son was only in the seventh grade, but some of his homework was already more sophisticated than anything I had ever done in school. I had stopped reading to look up the wordcircumlocutionon my phone when Jason mentioned his plans for the TV segment.

Now I remembered: seven retailers who were changing the world in small ways. It didn’t take an economist, let alone one with Jason’s credentials, to hype footwear and blankets, but these were the compromises he made for the sake of expanding his “platform.”

Had he really gone on air and talked about guilt-free splurges without acknowledging the claim against him? No way. The Twittersphere would have been merciless. These days, the public thinks they’re owed an immediate explanation.

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