The Wives

TWENTY-SEVEN

I’m buzzed. Three vodka sodas and I’ve had nothing to eat all morning. My vision teeter-totters and my limbs feel loose and undisciplined. I chide myself as I comb my fingers through my hair in the tiny bar bathroom, grimacing at my reflection. I look like a drunk: swollen face, red eyes and splotchy skin. At least I’d lost the orange sweater. I splash water on my face in the little sink before I head out.

I have exactly thirty minutes to pull myself together before I see my husband’s first wife. What she thinks of me matters, which is why drinking was a bad idea. I am—was—technically her replacement. Despite the fluorescent green jealousy I feel toward her, I also feel a kinship. I want her to like me. She could help me. I’m like an eager puppy, abused and still wagging its tail for love. I stop at a gas station and buy eyedrops, gum and body spray. At the last minute I ask the guy behind the counter for one of the burner phones. The body spray is probably a bad idea—it’s vanilla scented—but the bar was warm and I feel the dampness under my arms and on my lower back. I smell like a sweet, sweaty cupcake. I’m five minutes late when I run into the office. The secretary gives me an annoyed look when she sees me. The least you can do, lady...

“This way,” she says, standing. I follow her down a hall of doors. It’s all wrong, the way they’ve set it up. I’m reminded of high school, the long walk to the principal’s office. I can smell vanilla and sweat coming off me in a mist.

Regina is seated behind her desk when the secretary knocks lightly and opens the door. She steps back without meeting my eyes and allows me to walk past her. Regina stands as soon as she sees me. She’s tiny, as Seth said, but much prettier than in her photos. I’m staring; I realize this when it’s only the two of us in the room, the secretary having taken her leave. This is surreal. She motions for me to sit in one of the two leather chairs that face her desk. Instead of reseating herself, she walks around the desk and sits in the empty chair next to me, crossing her legs. I smell her perfume right away, the sleepy scent of lavender. I wither in my chair, as if by doing so I could pull back the vanilla/sweat smell.

“Can I offer you water or coffee?” she asks. “Perhaps tea?”

“I’m fine, thank you.” I push my hair behind my ears and straighten up in my chair. The principal mustn’t know I’m afraid.

“I understand you’re considering divorce.” The cadence of her voice is mesmerizing—deep, yet feminine, like one of those old movie stars in black-and-white films. Puuurrrr.

“Not just considering,” I say. “And by the way, thank you for giving up lunch to see me. I realize that I missed my appointment. It was very kind of you.” My mother always said that confident people didn’t overthank or overthink.

“It’s business,” Regina says. “Work now, food later, right?” She smiles. “So tell me about your situation.”

I clear my throat. In the cuff on my sleeve I can feel the price tag I forgot to pull off. I thumb the cardboard, pushing it farther up my sleeve.

“My husband is a polygamist.” It’s a statement meant to jar an average person. I’d often thought about blurting it out at other times to strangers or my colleagues just to see the look on their faces.

Regina’s face, however, remains the same. It’s almost as if she hasn’t heard me. She doesn’t ask me to clarify or expound and it’s not until she says, “Carry on,” that I do.

“I am his legal wife. He has two others.”

She stares at me, hard. “Are there children involved?”

I pause, thinking of Hannah, how she’d looked at me like she’d never seen me before when I rang her doorbell last night. The confusion and hurt in Seth’s eyes when I told the doctor what he was. I feel a niggling doubt creep into my mind. You are crazy, you are crazy, you are crazy.

“His third wife is pregnant, not very far along.”

“And these other wives, do they all share a home with your...husband?”

I shake my head. “Two live here, in Portland. I live in Seattle.”

I search her face for any sign of recognition. Did she know as little about me as I had known about her?

“Do they know about you?” she asks.

I look long and hard at her face, the full lips lined and colored in cherry, the splattering of freckles across her nose showing through her makeup. It’s now or never, this is what I came for.

“Do you know, Regina? How much has he told you about me?”

Her expression never changes. She crosses her legs as she leans back in her chair, blank eyes drilling into mine. For the longest time we stay just like that, her watching me and me watching her. It feels like I’m about to fall off the edge of a precipice.

“Thursday,” she says.

And I want to leap from the chair and scream, that one word validating everything I am here for. Regina knows my name, she knows who I am. Self-doubt is slime and glue, but Regina saying my name has washed me clean.

“Yes,” I say, breathless...pathetic.

Her face is arranged in undisguised disgust. She sighs, uncrosses her legs and leans forward, forearms on thighs. She doesn’t look so put together now, just tired. It’s amazing what a facial expression can do to change someone’s look.

“Seth contacted me. He said you might come by.” She stares at the ground between her heels before straightening up.

So Seth already knows where I am. He knows me better than I realized. There is a sinking feeling in my stomach as I stare at her. While I’ve been imagining him scrambling to call my mother and Anna, he went straight to Regina. I blink hard, trying to disguise the shock that must be on my face. I thought I had been smart, but apparently my husband is smarter. Silly me. But that is the theme of my life for these last years: silly me. Seth had anticipated this, my breakaway from his plan. He’d thought about all of this, predicted my actions. Perhaps only in the last weeks, but maybe always.

“All right, Thursday, you came all this way, so tell me why you wanted to see me. I gather it’s not about divorce.” Her lips are tucked in at the corners—resolute and disgusted. She’s very wrong about the divorce, but I don’t tell her that. Let her think what she wants. All I want are answers about the man we both married.

I look around the office for the personal touches of the woman I’m speaking to: picture frames, rugs, anything that will tell me more about who she is. The decor is masculine, which could have very little to do with her; women don’t opt for this much cherrywood. She has a penchant for ferns, as there are three in total: one sits on top of a bookshelf with its leaves spilling over the sides, the other is smaller and on her desk and the third rests on the windowsill—the healthiest of the three. They’re well-tended, too, lush.

“I’m here because I don’t know my husband. I was hoping you could give me some clarity.” That’s the nice way of putting it, really. My husband hits women and had me institutionalized for asking too many questions. As it turns out, I am a really stupid woman, and I need Regina to tell me that she was equally as stupid for trusting him, and then I can tell her about Hannah.

“Your husband?” Her face is amused, eyebrows raised.

I want to tell her that now’s not the time to get into a pissing match about who Seth belongs to, but I stay quiet.

“I’m not sure I can help you—in fact, I’m not sure I want to.” She smooths out her skirt and glances at her watch. It’s subtle, but she meant for me to see it. I’m wasting her time. I suddenly don’t feel as sure as I did a moment ago. The temperature has switched.

“You’ve been with Seth for eight years—” I begin.

“Five,” she interrupts. “Seth and I were together for five years before the divorce, but of course you know that because you’re the reason we got divorced.”

I stare at her blankly. Of course I was, but she’d agreed to it. This isn’t going the way I expected it to. Why is she being so sour about something she agreed to? Seth met and married Regina five years before me. I remember the jealousy at all the extra time they’d had together, how I’d never be able to catch up.

“And these last three...?”

“These last three, what?” She snaps that part, the poise falling away for the briefest of moments as something flashes in her eyes.

“That...you’ve been together. The plural marriage...”

Regina looks like I’ve slapped her. Her slender neck jerks back. I can see the starburst pattern of pink rising above her neckline. I’ve made her nervous. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but it’s something to be making her nervous.

“I’m sorry,” she says, “I don’t know what you mean.”

I know that if I jump out of my seat and shake her while screaming, Tell me the truth, you bitch! the police will be called. At the very least, I’d be escorted out of the building and one more person would think I was crazy.

“Aside from the brief contact he made to tell me that you would be coming to see me, I have not seen or spoken to my ex-husband in years,” she says.

Her words sever my next question. My mouth hangs open until I press my lips together, frowning.

I stare at Regina and then my hands. My thoughts are dumb, thick. I don’t make sense and neither does Regina. I hear white noise and the pounding of my own heart.

“What do you mean?” I manage finally.

“I think you should leave.” Her face is blanched as she stands up and heads for the door.

I follow her, not knowing what else to do. My thoughts are tangled between Regina and Hannah.

“You need help, Thursday,” she says, looking squarely at my face. “You’re delusional. Seth said you were sick, but—”

“I am not sick.” I say it with such force that we both blink at each other for a few seconds. I repeat it in a calmer tone. “I’m not sick, despite what Seth has told you.”

“Get out.” She holds the door open and I stare past her, my thoughts spinning.

“Just tell me one thing,” I say. “Please...”

Her lips pull into a tight line but she doesn’t refuse.

“Seth’s parents. Did you ever meet them?”

She looks confused. “Seth’s parents are dead,” she says, shaking her head. “They died years ago.”

“Thank you,” I breathe before walking out.