The Wives

THIRTY-SIX

It’s different this time; I am more relaxed, less anxious. The staff knows me by name and I no longer feel like a faceless victim. Dr. Steinbridge sees me three times a week. He says we are making progress.

I wander the long, stale-smelling corridors, thinking about my choices, itemizing my weaknesses. There are so many moments in my life when I should have been awake and instead was in a sleepy, emotional trance. I allowed things to happen to me.

I take all of the classes and groups: my favorite is holistic yoga, where we all gather in a windowless room and perch fluidly on purple mats, breathing deeply and emptying our minds of our troubles. So many troubles we have, so many disorders. Lauren brings me dinner twice a week from my favorite take-out places, and my mother visits, wearing a guilty expression and bearing huge plastic containers of homemade cookies.

“Enough for everyone,” she says.

I’ve never asked her what she thinks of the situation with Seth, or if she’s in contact with him. I don’t think I want to know. Once, when I said his name, a sour expression appeared on her face before it was quickly replaced by what I call her everything is all right! smile.

Anna has flown in twice to see me. The first time she came, she marched into Queen County with plenty to say about Seth, and loud enough for everyone in the vicinity to hear. Bless her. My father has not come. I don’t expect him to. I am his broken child, an embarrassment. I lied to my parents about Seth and now they know the truth: I am a mistress, not worthy of marriage.

During my last week in Queen County, I sit alone at dinner near the window, my tray of shepherd’s pie congealing in front of me. Jell-O, too, of course—always Jell-O. The water here tastes metallic and dirty, but I sip it slowly, staring out at the grassy lawn below. The window fogs from my breath and I breathe harder just to watch the patch of condensation grow and retract, grow and retract.

The therapy has been a breeze, really—helpful, even. After the police came to Hannah and Seth’s temporary home and found Seth bleeding on top of me, I was taken to the hospital. I spent three days there recovering from minor wounds before they transferred me to jail to await my arraignment.

Regina had set me up, of course, getting me to believe and accuse Seth of causing both of our miscarriages. But this turned out to help my case. My lawyer got me off on insanity and they sent me back to Queen County, this time for a much longer stay. I was relieved actually, afraid they’d send me somewhere new.

During my first meeting with Dr. Steinbridge, just a day after I arrived, he told me that I’d been stalking Seth and his new wife for quite some time. He also told me that Seth’s ex-wife, Regina, had corroborated the story by saying that I’d shown up at her work and her home, forcing myself inside and demanding information about them. Regina produced the voice mail I’d left her right before I’d charged into Seth and Hannah’s condo. The doctor played it for me as I sat in the leather armchair across from him. I didn’t move a limb as I listened, my body tense with anticipation. Even to my own ears, I sounded crazy. It was then that Dr. Steinbridge paused the voice mail, waiting for me to either deny or own these claims. I did neither. No point in denying the stalking part—that was true, regardless of how Regina had played me. I sat in silence, listening to him, the excuses dying on my tongue.

“You do not bear full responsibility for what happened,” Dr. Steinbridge told me. “Seth is a troubled individual, the way he grew up, the abuse he claims he suffered. He cheated on both of his wives and emotionally manipulated you. He used you and played into your denial. But we aren’t here to deal with Seth’s issues, we’re here to deal with yours. When you realized what was happening in your relationship with him, your mind created an alternate reality to deal with both the death of your unborn baby and the fact that Seth was moving on with someone else.”

“But he never tried to end things with me,” I said.

And then the good doctor produced half a dozen emails between Seth and me, all of which came directly from my email account. He let me read them. Seth, always logical, pleading with me to accept the fact that we were over and that he was sorry for cheating on Hannah. I had no memory of reading those emails, no memory of answering them. Dr. Steinbridge said that I deleted them in my desperation to pretend it wasn’t happening.

“The police also found the account you created under the name Will Moffit, the one you used to get access to Regina...”

“Yes, but I only did that because I thought she was cheating on him...”

He’d looked at me sympathetically.

“What about Seth’s parents? They sent me cards... I have them.”

“The cards were part of your case. Your attorney presented them to the jury as evidence when you pleaded guilty by reason of insanity. You wrote them. They brought in a handwriting analyst to prove it.”

I saw myself in line at the grocery store, a stack of cards on the conveyor belt. I’d whimpered, pressing the heels of my hands to my eyes.

“It’s right there, Thursday, right in front of you,” he’d said, tapping the papers with a finger. His fingers were gloriously bent, like knobby tree branches. I watched them poke at the printed pages in fascination. “You and Seth were never married. He had an affair with you when he was married to his first wife, Regina. Regina left him when she found out that he got you pregnant.” He’d paused to let that sink in. “But you lost the baby, and that caused you to enter a psychotic episode.”

Seth had not caused our miscarriages, but Regina made me believe that he had. Why? Regina had lost a baby—that all came out in the trial—but much earlier than mine, at eight weeks. She testified that she caught Seth tampering with her birth control. I’d looked back at Regina at that very moment, as she sat on the other side of the courtroom, remembering her confession in the diner that day, and I’d seen her face pale.

Once I made Seth the enemy in my mind, it was so easy to believe what Regina fed me. My baby had been healthy one day, moving and kicking, and then he’d just stopped. There was no medical reason found. Sometimes those things just happen, babies stop living.

“Dr. Steinbridge,” I say during one session. “Isn’t it funny that Seth never mentioned any of this the last time I was here?”

“He never claimed to be your husband, Thursday. When you came in last time it’s because Seth tried to end things with you. He admitted as much to me when I spoke to him privately, that he was married to someone else, and that you were his mistress. His wife, Hannah, figured out who you were on the last night you saw her. Do you remember?”

I remember having dinner with her, going to the bathroom and coming out to find her gone. I tell the doctor this.

“Seth figured out where you were and texted her. He told her to leave right away.”

“But when I got back to my apartment, he was there. His hand was beat up...”

“Yes, well, he claims he punched a wall when he found out you were stalking his wife. You attacked him when he told you it was over. I imagine he felt a sense of duty in visiting you here after that.”

“But he came to pick me up, take me home.”

“No,” the doctor says. “Your father picked you up and took you home.”

I laugh at that. “Are you kidding me? My father came to see me once after I got out of here. He doesn’t care about me.”

“Thursday,” Dr. Steinbridge says. “I was there. Your father came, brought you clothes, stayed with you for a week until you crushed Ambien into his dinner and snuck out to drive to Portland.”

“No,” I say. My limbs feel odd, like they’re not a part of me. The doctor has it wrong, or he’s lying. Maybe Seth got to him, paid him off to keep quiet...

“You were on heavy medication and still suffering from delusions.”

I want to laugh. How crazy do they think I am, mistaking my father for Seth?

I stand up suddenly, my movement so abrupt my chair falls backward and hits the ground with a metallic smack. Dr. Steinbridge stares up at me from where he’s sitting, his hands folded calmly on the desk. His eyes, shaded by those caterpillar eyebrows of his, look sad. I feel as if I’m evaporating, slowly being sucked away into oblivion.

“Close your eyes, Thursday. See it again as it really was.”

I don’t have to, I don’t have to close my eyes—because it’s playing out like a reel in my mind.

I see those days in my condo, except this time I see it the right way: my father hovering and handing me my pills, my father reading thrillers from my bookshelf, my father watching Friends with me on the couch.

“No,” I say again, my eyes filling with tears.

Seth hadn’t come to get me because he told me our affair was over and he’d gone back to his wife. Seth had abandoned me for the second time. I wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough. I deserved to be alone. My wail is a siren, loud and shrill. I claw at my face, my arms, anything I can reach. I want to scrape off all of my skin, scrape until there is nothing left but muscle and blood, until I am merely a thing and not a human being. There is warmth on my fingertips when they charge in and grab me; my blood leaves stains on their scrubs.

In my first year as a nurse, a man came into the ER two weeks before Christmas with a crushed skull. His name was Robbie Clemmins and I swore I’d never forget his name, so tragic was his accident. A roofer who volunteered in his spare time at a nursing home, he’d been hanging Christmas lights on the outside of the building when he’d fallen two stories and landed on his back, smacking his head on the pavement. When someone found him, he was conscious, lying on his back and speaking in a calm, normal voice. He was reciting an oral report he’d given in the fifth grade about how to properly skin a squirrel. When they wheeled him into the ER he was sobbing, muttering something about his wife, though he wasn’t married. I remember seeing the concave in his head and wanting to throw up, and then later the X-rays in which his skull looked like a cracked egg. The impact had jarred his brain; chips of his skull entered the brain tissue and had to be removed during a surgery that lasted eight hours. Though we saved his life, we were unable to save who he was before the accident. I remember thinking how fragile we were as humans, souls covered in tender flesh and brittle bone; one wrong step and we became someone else entirely.

My brain is intact in the traditional way; I did not fall from a roof, though it seems I fell at some height from reality. Dr. Steinbridge has diagnosed me with a list of things I’d be embarrassed to repeat; the bottom line is that I have an unhealthy brain. I often sit in my room and picture my brain enflamed and oozing with my various diagnoses. There are days where I want to crack my own head open and remove my brain, and I find myself fantasizing about all the ways I can do it. I want to get better, but sometimes I can’t even remember what’s wrong with me. I am in my room one afternoon when I look up and see Dr. Steinbridge standing in the doorway. The serious look on his face tells me he has news.

“Regina Coele has requested a visit with you,” he tells me. “You don’t have to see her if you don’t want to.”

I’m touched; his interest in my case has become more tender than the stiff, formal way our relationship started.

“I want to talk to her,” I say. And it’s true—I’ve been waiting for this for a year, wading through the days until I could come face-to-face with the answers Seth’s first wife holds.

“I’ll put in the approval form. I think this may really help you, Thursday. To put things into perspective and to move forward.”

It’s two weeks before a nurse comes to tell me that Regina is here to see me. My heart pounds as I walk to the rec room, wearing sweats and a tank top, my hair piled on top of my head in a messy knot. When I glanced at myself in the mirror before leaving my room I looked relaxed...pretty, even.

Regina is dressed smartly in a button-down shirt and dress pants, her hair pulled away from her face in a chignon. I make my way over to where she sits, smiling at some of the nurses as I pass them.

“Hello, Thursday,” she says.

She eyes me up and down, a look of surprise on her face. She was expecting a mess. I am not a mess. I do yoga every day, and I eat my fruits and veggies—I’ve even been sleeping well. My body is healthy even if my mind is not. I slide into the seat opposite her and offer a smile. I imagine it’s a peaceful smile because I’m no longer twisting and turning with apprehension.

“Hi,” I say.

I’ve thought about Regina almost every day since coming back to Queen County. The thoughts aren’t angry or mean; it’s more of a distant curiosity. I am too medicated to be angry at this point.

Her nostrils flare as she watches me, both of us so carefully waiting for the other to speak.

“How have you been?” Icebreaker words!

I divert. “Why are you here?”

“I don’t really know,” she says. “I guess I wanted to see how you were.”

“To make yourself feel better or worse?”

Her pale skin flushes, strawberry-red patches appearing on her cheeks and chin. Regina’s game had a steep price; she may have meant to punish me, but Seth and Hannah will be paying for the rest of their lives.

“Both, I suppose. I never intended for things to go as far as they did...”

“Then why?” I ask.

“You ruined my life. I wanted you to pay for that.”

My thoughts run ahead, spiral back and then sink into a mire of remorse and guilt. I hadn’t known I was ruining her life...or had I? The reality I made up ruined everyone’s lives, but Regina wasn’t as innocent as Hannah had been. She’d used my weakness against me; she’d set me up.

“Well, you got what you wanted, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” she says finally. “I suppose I did.”

I’d been so eager to blame someone for the death of my baby that I’d never questioned her story, and Regina, so eager to punish me, had never imagined the outcome it would have.

“I knew you had issues with mental health, but I had no idea the stories you made up in your own head—about the polygamy.”

I look away, ashamed. Shame is a powerful reality check. Dr. Steinbridge said that it was shame that caused me to create my alternate state of reality. I was good enough for Seth to fuck, his mistress for both of his marriages, but not good enough to love.

The doctor is teaching me to cope with my shame, to deal with it. “Make decisions you can live with...” he says to me.

“I wanted to make you look crazy. I didn’t know you were crazy.”

I bristle at that. “You think you’re not?” I shoot back. “You think it’s normal to do what you did? I may be the one in here, but at least I can admit what I did. You told me he scared you to get me to further believe he was abusing Hannah. You made me believe he’d caused your miscarriage and mine. All to get me to go there that night.”

She stares at me, her mouth thinning into a straight line of denial. Of course she didn’t want to think she was as bad as me. I didn’t want to think of myself as the other woman; denial is a twisted, perverted soul-thinner.

“You’re the one who brought the gun. You shot Seth,” she hisses. “I wanted you punished for ruining my life—I didn’t want Seth to get hurt.”

I’m enraged by the disgust I hear in her voice. I close my eyes, willing myself not to be angry. I hear Dr. Steinbridge’s words: “You are only responsible for yourself.”

“Yes. But you could have helped me and you chose to use me instead. You handed me the delusion.”

Regina’s face is a mask of self-righteousness. My insides ignite, fingertips tingling. Seth and Hannah did not deserve what happened to them. Seth was a cheater; he’d had an affair with me when he was married to Regina, and then, when I couldn’t have his children, he’d moved on to someone else: Hannah. But he’d continued his affair with me even after he’d married Hannah. The rejection had caused me to lose touch with reality. Seth would never walk again; my bullet passed through his spine. He would never chase their child across a park, walk her down the aisle... I am responsible for that. The pain of realization hurts my stomach.

“Were you lying when you told me that Seth was violent with you? You said he pushed you against a wall...”

“No, that wasn’t a lie,” she says. “Seth has a temper.”

My ear stings; it always stings when I think of Seth. I think of Hannah and her bruises, once again wondering if she was lying to protect him. I suppose I’ll never know the truth. There’s comfort in knowing he’s in a wheelchair. He’d not be able to hurt a woman physically again, and his days of cheating are over.

“I’m glad we both got away from him,” I say.

“No, no, no,” Regina says. “This isn’t a little club. I’m not like you.” She laughs. “You’re crazy.”

And that’s when I think of Robbie Clemmins and his broken brain, his skull smashed to pieces, his life altered forever. He was a different kind of broken than I am, just like Regina. Except I have been sent here to pay and she is still lying. Her laughter hurts my ears. I cover them with my palms, pressing hard, trying to block out the sound. It’s the same as that day in my kitchen, Seth calling me crazy, looking at me with disgust in his eyes. I’m shaking when I rear back, slamming my head into Regina’s nose. The force slams my jaw together. I bite through my bottom lip and feel the shards of a broken tooth. She screams, a hand reaching out to touch the spray of blood rushing from her nose. I jump over the table, knocking her to her back. Her head hits the floor and I see the shock and panic in her eyes—eyes wide with fear. Robbie didn’t know what was happening to him when he lay on his back, his brain dying, but Regina will. I cradle her head between my hands and slam it into the floor. I can hear shouting, so much shouting.

“Help!” someone screams. “She’s going to kill her!”

I am helping. I’m helping myself.