The Wives

THIRTY-ONE

When I leave Regina’s apartment, my head is spinning. I pause at the top of the stairs, my hand on the railing. Someone has scratched the word cunt into the metal with their keys. Regina could be lying about everything. I can’t actually trust my husband’s other wife, can I? Could it be that Seth lied to her, too? Lied about me and our relationship? I thought that perhaps he was keeping things from his shiny new wife, Hannah, but maybe he kept Regina in the dark, too. Had he lied to us all? Who was this man? Had I loved him so unconditionally that I’d gouged out my own eyes? Seth, who told me that Regina didn’t want children, and that’s why he sought out a second wife. Seth, who never told Regina that I’d miscarried our baby. There are so many secrets, and I’ve been blind for too long. It makes me feel sick that I’ve allowed all of this to happen. I need to speak to Hannah, make her tell me what’s going on. Where has he hidden Hannah?

I drive back to the Cottonmouth house, feeling worse by the minute. My stomach makes a loud appeal for food. When was the last time I ate? I pull into a drive-through and order a sandwich and a soda, but when I unwrap the foil, the sight of it makes me feel ill. I throw it away, sipping delicately on the Coke. I’m feverish, my face clammy and warm. I stumble into the house, my head spinning. The empty walls swim around me, and the smell of paint and rot makes me gag. Suddenly, I don’t want to be here. I’ll sleep just a few minutes, enough to make me feel better. I duck into the room and lock the door behind me. It’s only eight o’clock, but my body aches from exhaustion. I crawl into the stale-smelling bed, my eyes heavy, and I sleep.

“Thursday?”

I sit up in bed, groggy, and reach for my cell. It’s not there. I can’t find the time. I’m holding a phone to my ear and someone is saying my name. That’s right. I’m in Portland. I left my cell phone in the corner of an elevator. This is a burner.

“Yeah...” I say, struggling to untangle the sheets and sit up. “Who’s this?”

A woman says my name again. “Thursday—” And then, “It’s Regina.”

Suddenly, I’m wide awake, my senses on full alert. I throw my legs over the side of the bed and stand up.

“What’s wrong? Has something happened?”

“No...” Her voice is uncertain.

I pace the tiny space to the window and back to the bed, the strange phone clumsy in my hand.

“Seth knows you’re here. I told him you came to the firm. He’s looking for you.”

I sit down abruptly. I’m not surprised. But how long until he tracks me down?

“Why are you telling me?”

There’s a long pause on her end. I can hear her breathing into the phone, clogged breath like she’s been crying.

“Can we meet somewhere to talk?”

“When?”

“Now,” she says. “There’s an all-night diner two blocks from my apartment. It’s called Larry’s. I can be there in thirty minutes.”

“All right,” I say cautiously. “How do I know I can trust you?”

“I don’t think you have any other choice.” She hangs up. She’s an attorney; she’s used to getting the last word.

I hang up the phone and begin searching for my clothes. The only thing relatively clean is my orange sweater. I pull it on and slide into my jeans. My hair is a dirty mess. I brush it into a quick ponytail, splash water on my face, and I’m out the door five minutes after Regina’s call ended. It’s only when I turn on the ignition to my car that the dashboard lights up and I see that it’s 4:30 in the morning. What would possess her to call in the middle of the night?

I’m seated in a booth in the nearly empty Larry’s with a cup of coffee in front of me when Regina walks through the doors. She’s wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, her hair in a knot on top of her head. She could be mistaken for a college student. She has a backpack slung over a shoulder—not the kind you run away with, just the kind you use as a purse. I watch as she surveys the diner, looking for me. My breath is jagged. I lift a hand as her head turns my way and she catches my eye. She takes her time working her way over to where I am, and I have the feeling she’s questioning her decision to come here. She slides into the seat across from me, slipping her arms out of the backpack. I notice right away that her eyes are swollen and red. She takes a minute to settle in, fussing with nothing, before looking up. She is here, I realize, to unload a burden.

“Same as her,” she barks when the server approaches our table.

I smile at him apologetically as he hurries off. It makes her angry to be honest. A hazard of her job. She reminds me a little of my sister, bossy and so sure of herself that she comes across as irritated with everyone else. My sister and I are so different; our relationship has always felt tepid, something we could both do without. So for the sake of our mother, we try to see each other at least once a month, which usually ends up being an awkward dinner. We document the night with an overly enthusiastic selfie that we then text to our mother. She gets so excited that we’re hanging out that it makes the whole ritual more bearable.

I decide to keep the upper hand and be irritated with her for being irritated with me.

“Well?” I say, my voice terse. “Why am I here?”

She swipes her fingers under her eyes and then checks them for mascara. You washed it all off this afternoon, I want to remind her. Then she looks at me squarely and says, “The first year Seth and I were married, I had a miscarriage.”

My heart sinks. I want to reach out and touch her hand, but there’s something so stony about her face that I hold back. Regina doesn’t seem like the type who wants comfort. I don’t do the typical I’m sorrys, either. We aren’t two girlfriends sharing heartache over coffee.

“Okay...” I say. My hands wrap around my empty mug for lack of anything better to do. The caffeine is already in my system and making me jittery.

Plenty of women have miscarriages, most of them early in the pregnancy. Maybe she’s trying to find common ground.

“I was twenty-one weeks,” she says. “I didn’t know about...yours. Seth... He never told me.”

I let go of my coffee mug and sit back. “Okay,” I say again. “What did he tell you?”

She glances at me, unsure. “He said that you just hadn’t gotten pregnant yet. That you were trying.”

“You told me that you haven’t spoken to Seth until recently, that you’ve been over for years, so why would he tell his ex-wife something like that?”

The server appears at our table with a fresh pot of coffee and a mug. She fills the empty mug without a word and sets it in front of Regina, then leans over to top mine off. When she’s gone, Regina pulls her mug toward her, cradling it, but doesn’t take a sip.

I stare at her without speaking, waiting for her to continue.

“What do you remember about your miscarriage?” she asks.

I bristle under her question. I don’t remember much, I try not to; the details of my miscarriage are painful.

“Thursday...” Regina reaches out a hand to touch mine and I stare at it, shocked. “Please,” she says. “This is important.”

“All right...” I lick my lips and shut my eyes, trying to remember the details of the most painful day of my life. “I remember a lot of pain...and blood. Being rushed to the hospital...”

“What about before that? Where were you?”

“I... We were away. A weekend trip north.”

She leans forward, elbows on the table. Her eyebrows draw together, the slash between them deep. “What did you eat...drink...? Did he give you anything?”

I shake my head. “Of course we ate. Seth wasn’t drinking alcohol because I couldn’t. I had tea...”

“What type of tea?”

I don’t miss the urgency in her voice. It looks like she wants to leap across the table and shake me.

“It was a tea he said his mother sent for me. To help with the nausea.” The moment the words are out of my mouth I feel the blood drain from my face. I’m light-headed. I grip the edge of the table for support and close my eyes. Regina had said that Seth’s parents were dead. Where did that tea really come from and why would he tell me his mother sent it?

“I had terrible sickness, all day...” I can feel myself swaying; I take a few deep breaths to calm myself.

“Herbal tea,” Regina says softly. “In a little brown sack.”

I nod. “Yes.”

“Was it the first time he gave it to you?”

I think back. I’d been complaining about it; my doctor had prescribed something for the nausea but it hadn’t worked, so Seth suggested I try his mother’s tea.

“She’s had quite a few pregnancies, Thursday,” he’d said with a smile when I’d asked him if it was safe. “All of my mothers used it.”

I’d laughed at that, and he’d winked at me. In the end, he made me the tea, boiling water in the room’s little kettle. It had tasted like licorice and coriander and once I added some sugar I hadn’t minded it at all.

“You drank it all weekend?” Regina asked.

I nodded.

“All right,” she says. “Okay...”

Her face is pale, her eyelashes fluttering. And then she opens her rosebud mouth and tells me a story. And I wish she could take it all back, swallow it into herself so that I can pretend it’s not so. I’m not that stupid. I’m not that gullible. I’m not so easily used.