The Wives

TWENTY-TWO

Lauren comes back two days later, looking tired and wearing a puffy black jacket the color of garbage bags over her scrubs. She avoids looking at me as she handles a Starbucks cup, spinning it around and around between her fingers. Her fingernails aren’t painted; I don’t think I’ve ever seen her without her fingernails painted. I wonder if that’s an upper-class cry for help, Lauren in distress. I’m too distracted to spend any time on niceties and small talk.

“I got you one, but they wouldn’t let me bring it in.”

Got me what? Oh! A latte—she’s talking about a latte. I dismiss the coffee with a wave of my hand. “We’re not allowed to have caffeine.”

She nods, taking a deep breath before she begins, puffing out her cheeks and widening her eyes. I brace myself.

“She’s not on Facebook, Thursday, there’s nothing. I checked all of the social media sites—I even checked Pinterest and Shutterfly. She doesn’t exist. God, I even tried changing her name around—you know people have all those cutesie handles nowadays...”

I nod, thinking of Regina, how I’d had to be clever with her name to find her.

“She’s either deleted her profile or has extreme privacy settings,” Lauren says. She picks at the cardboard sleeve around her cup. “I Googled her, too... Nothing. Are you sure that’s her real name?”

“I don’t know. That’s the name I saw on the paper I found in Seth’s pocket.” I drop my head into my hands.

“What about the picture of Regina and Hannah? Did you find that?” She reaches into her purse and pulls out a folded piece of paper. Lauren’s face is washed of color. She slides the paper across the table and I reach for it. My hands shake as I unfold it. It’s a printout of the photo I’d found of Regina and the woman I suspect is Hannah. But when I look down at the grainy printout something is wrong. Regina is the same, her smile wide just as I remember it, but in the corner of the photo where I’d once seen Hannah there is a woman with dark hair.

“No,” I say. No, no, no...

“Is that her?” Lauren asks. Her finger taps the photo, right where Hannah should be. “Is that Hannah, Thursday...?”

I shake my head, pushing the paper away. I’m cold all over. I rock slightly, shaking my head. Am I crazy?

If I think I’m crazy, maybe Lauren thinks so, too. I look up suddenly. “Do you believe me?”

“Yes...” But there’s a catch in her voice. Her eyes dart around the room like she’s trying to find a loophole to my question. My heart does a little squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.

We sit in silence for a few minutes, looking out the window. Lauren, I notice, is slouching in her seat—another telling sign that all is not right. I don’t know if she’s bothered by my situation or if there’s a burden of her own she’s carrying.

“There’s one more thing...” She’s been holding on to this, saving it for last. Why won’t she look at me?

I feel the figurative knots form in my belly and my knee starts to bounce under the table. I just want her to spit it out, get it over with. Squeeze, squeeze, knot, knot...

“Tell me...”

“Look, there’s no easy way to say this. I made a few calls and...well...the house for the address you gave me... Ugh, Thursday! It’s registered under your name.” She covers her eyes with her palms.

My mind goes blank. I don’t know what to say. I stare at Lauren like I misheard her until she finally repeats herself.

“What?”

She is looking at me differently. It’s the way the doctors and nurses look at me, with cautious pity—this poor girl, this broken thing. I stand up and force myself to look her in the eyes.

“That is not my house. I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s not mine. I don’t even care if you don’t believe me. I’m not crazy.”

She holds up both hands as if to ward me off. “I didn’t say you were crazy. I’m just telling you what I found.”

I lick my lips as I back up. They don’t give you ChapStick in this place; they try to soothe your mind but let your body fall to pieces. Everyone here is either dry or oily; their hair plastered to their heads in stringy, wet-looking chunks, or decorated with tiny flakes of dandruff like they were just snowed on.

I’m trying not to do anything rash, like run off to my room without a goodbye, or yell—yelling would be bad. But it’s taking all of my self-control. The way people perceive you is the really mentally thwarting thing in life. If everyone is against you, you start to question things about yourself, like now.

“Thank you for coming.” I force the words out. “I appreciate you trying, anyway.” I hear her calling my name as I walk briskly away—not running, not even trotting—just a quick exit so she can’t see what I’m feeling.

In my room, I curl up on the thin mattress, my knees drawn to my chest, and press my cheek against the scratchy sheets. They smell of bleach and a little of vomit. Susan is staring at me from across the room; I glanced at her when I walked in the door, her lashless eyes alarmed, like she’d forgotten I live here, too.

I can feel her eyes boring into my back. This is usually the time when we’re both in the room, between our group therapy sessions and dinner. “A little downtime,” they call it. Most of us use our downtime to reflect on how down we really are. It’s a catch-22.

“How long have you been here, Susan?” My voice is muffled and I have to repeat my question when she squeaks back a mousy little response.

“A month,” she says.

I sit up, leaning my back against the wall and hugging my pillow to my chest.

“Have you ever been in a place like this before?”

She glances up at me and when she sees me watching her, she looks away again. “Only once...when I was much younger. My father died and I didn’t cope well.” I like the way Susan sums everything up so you don’t have to ask more questions. Her therapist must love her.

“And when did they decide you were ready to leave?”

Susan looks flustered. Two red spots appear on her cheeks and she begins knotting her fingers together.

“When I stopped being suicidal—or saying I was.”

True that. At least I know I’m on the right track. I’ve stopped talking about it, all of it.

“I hope things get better for you, Susan. He wasn’t deserving.” I mean it, too. My thoughts for the last few days have been about women like me, and Lo, and Susan—women who give everything to the men who break their trust.

She looks up at me then, and without the support of her eyebrows, I can’t tell if she’s surprised or sad. She appears to be somewhat pleased by the time my words sink in. Like she’s repeating them over and over in her head. He wasn’t deserving, he wasn’t deserving.

“Thank you,” she says softly. “He really wasn’t.”

I nod, but I think, Neither was Seth. Not deserving. Not of the women who bow and cow and do everything to please him, nor of the life he’s built on our backs. Why, he has a whole team behind him: legal, childbearing and money. I’ve never wanted to admit that part, that maybe he’s with me for my money, for my trust fund. It’s been a thing I don’t think about.

I’m the money. I’ve never seen myself that way, never thought it played a factor in our relationship. But I’m rich by any sense of the word. My father has made sure my sister and I are well taken care of. My sister snorted most of her trust and then married a wealthy country club man named Michael Sprouce, Jr. That had been her saving grace in my parents’ eyes. The money has never meant anything to me, only Seth has. And so I’ve always been generous...oblivious, even, handing over control to him.

But now...now everything feels different. Is different. He’s sequestered me away and that isn’t something you do to your wife, someone you love. It’s what you do to someone you’re trying to manage. But he’s been managing all three of us all along.

Susan and I sit facing each other, our eyes glued to the ceiling as we wait for dinnertime.

I make a list in my head of things I must do when I get out: check the bank account, talk to the wives, contact Seth’s parents and talk to his business partner, Alex, who doesn’t know I exist. They can’t keep me in here forever. I will get out, I will show everyone who he really is. He can’t do this to me. This time I’m going to fight back.