The Replacement Wife (4 page)

Not like the Upper West Side apartment she’d grown up in, which had been smaller but which had seemed enormous after her mother died. Memories flitted at the back of her mind. She’d been fourteen at the time, the same age as Kyra, and her sister, Holly, was eleven. The proverbial poor little rich girls, with their dad on the road three weeks out of every month, and their only living relative, Grandma Agnes, on the other side of the continent. There had been just the live-in housekeeper, Rosa, who was kind but spoke only broken English and who pined for her own children back in Puerto Rico. The burden fell to Camille to look after herself and her sister. It was she who took Holly shopping at Bloomingdale’s, where their father had a charge account, when she needed new clothes, and who helped Holly with her homework and made sure she bundled up before going outside in cold weather. She reminded their dad whenever there was a parent-teacher conference or school play. She even had to remind him about their birthdays, so he wouldn’t forget to buy a gift . . . or show up, period.

One time, Grandma Agnes became suspicious of the fact that their father was almost never around when she phoned. She demanded to know who, besides Rosa, was looking after them.

“Well, um, there’s Maureen.” Camille experienced a moment of panic before she plucked the name from midair. She didn’t want for her and Holly to be sent to live with their grandmother.

“Maureen? Maureen who? Is your father seeing someone?” Her grandmother was instantly on high alert, no doubt imagining that her former son-in-law had taken up with some floozy.

“No! Nothing like that.” Camille made no mention of her father’s secretary, with whom he’d been spending far more time than when their mother was alive—Louise, who’d become suddenly indispensable, even going with him on his business trips. Louise was no floozy. “She was, um, Mom’s friend. Her
good
friend,” she threw in for extra measure. It amazed her how easily she could lie.

“Funny. I don’t recall your mother ever mentioning anyone by the name of Maureen.” Camille pictured her grandmother standing in her kitchen, in Del Mar, with its view of the orange trees in the backyard, wearing one of her grandma outfits—no-iron slacks and a color-coordinated blouse, of which she seemed to have an endless variety—her hair teased into its signature apricot poof. She’d be on her way to a bridge game or to meet one of her friends at the country club.

“You probably just forgot, is all,” Camille said helpfully.

“I’m not
senile,
” her grandmother snapped, then her voice softened. “So does she come around often, this Maureen?”

“Oh, yes. She’s here practically all the time. She’s helping Holly with her homework right now.” The lie gathered momentum, like a kite caught in an updraft, tugging Camille along with it.

“Is she? That’s nice.” Grandma Agnes seemed satisfied. But before Camille could breathe a sigh of relief, she said, “Why don’t you put her on? I’d like to have a word with her.”

Camille broke out in a sweat, thinking she would never get away with this. But somehow the lies just kept tumbling out of her mouth, like the toads in the fairy tale about the two princesses. “Um, she can’t come to the phone right now. She . . . she just went into the bathroom.”

“In that case, I’ll wait.” Grandma Agnes was clearly in no hurry. Either that, or she still had her suspicions.

Camille was panicking now, imagining all sorts of things. Being put in foster care would be worse than having to live with Grandma Agnes. Would her grandmother sic the authorities on her dad if she knew the truth? She scrambled to extricate herself from the tight spot she was in. “It might be a while,” she told her grandmother. “She said she had an upset stomach.”

“Maybe she shouldn’t be around you and Holly if she’s sick.”

“Oh, it’s not that. She ate some bad sushi or something.”

Lie upon lie, springing from nowhere, but somehow she’d stumbled upon the magic words. If Grandma Agnes was suspicious of her dad’s activities, she was even more suspicious of raw fish: To her, sushi was downright barbaric. Naturally, if you were foolish enough to eat it, you’d get sick.

That was the end of her interrogation. Maybe because to pursue it would have meant getting on a plane, and Grandma Agnes was even more afraid of flying than of raw fish; their mom had always taken them to visit her instead. After that, whenever her grandmother phoned, Camille would sneak in casual references to Maureen, as if they were so used to having her around it was hardly worth mentioning.

Years later, at Grandma Agnes’s funeral, they were approached by a dear friend of hers, a woman by the name of Ivy Klausen. “What a comfort it was for Agnes knowing you girls always had someone to look after you when your father was away,” declared Ivy, sniffling into her lace-trimmed handkerchief. “If I heard it once, I heard it a thousand times—‘Thank God for Maureen!’”

Their father gave them a baffled look, as if say,
Who the hell is Maureen?

The memory was a painful reminder, and now she moved about the kitchen as if on autopilot. The numbness was wearing off. Her fingertips prickled with sensation as she took out the chicken breasts their housekeeper, Graciela, had left to marinate in the fridge. She sliced French bread and assembled the fixings for a salad. She was sliding the chicken into the oven when her daughter walked in.

“Need any help?” Kyra asked.

Camille was touched by the offer. Kyra used to love hanging out with her in the kitchen, helping with supper, but these days it seemed every spare moment when she wasn’t with her friends was spent either texting them or gabbing with them on the phone. When Camille had bemoaned this fact to Edward, he’d reminded her, in that oh-so-reasonable tone of his that had a way of setting her teeth on edge, “She’s a teenager. What do you expect?” He was right, of course. And there was little to be done about it. So she tried to be more patient with their teenage daughter’s growing pains—which, truth to tell, pained her more than they did Kyra—and to delight in moments such as these.

She put on a smile. “Don’t you have homework?”

“All done, except for my English essay.” Kyra got out a knife and began slicing tomatoes, dropping them into the salad bowl. “Mr. Costello’s always giving us these bogus assignments. Like, whoever heard of doing a book report all in dialogue?”

“I don’t know. Sounds like fun.”

Kyra rolled her eyes. “With the
Gossip Girl
s maybe. Not
Pride and Prejudice
.”

When Kyra was done with the tomatoes, Camille gave her a cucumber to peel. “When I was your age, I had a mad crush on Mr. Darcy,” she said. “I planned to marry a man just like him when I grew up.”

“Yeah, Dad kind of reminds me of Mr. Darcy.” Kyra smiled at her own joke. She was the spitting image of Edward: lean and lanky, with his olive skin and amber eyes and wavy dark hair, which when she was an infant had stuck straight up like down on a baby chick. Kyra was also the first to pick up on anything amiss—unlike her brother, who wouldn’t notice if bombs were falling—as evidenced when she looked up a minute later from chopping green onions to peer at Camille with a creased brow. “Mom, is everything okay?” she asked.

“Sure. Why?” Camille paused as she opening a bottle of salad dressing.

“You’re crying.”

Camille brought a hand to her cheek, surprised, and at the same time not surprised, to find it wet with tears. “Must be the onions,” she said, gesturing toward the green bits strewn over the chopping block.

“They’re scallions,” Kyra corrected.

“Can I help it if my nose is more sensitive than most people’s?” Camille attempted to make light of it, which was an effort in her current state. She felt as if she might crumple like a piece of aluminum foil with the slightest pressure.

Kyra let it go, but the worried look on her face remained. Life in their household was back to normal in most respects, but the aftereffects of the past year’s ordeal lingered still. Zach couldn’t sleep at night unless the night-light in his room was on. And Kyra remained watchful, quick to pick up on any change in mood.

Mindful of this, Camille was quick to change the subject. “How’s the new boy?” she inquired. Kyra looked up at her with what seemed a purposely blank expression. “I’m talking about Jan. Unless there’s another new kid I don’t know about.” Camille knew next to nothing about the mysterious exchange student from Norway, except that Kyra had a crush on him (which she would die rather than admit). “Is he getting along all right?”

“I guess.” Kyra’s expression turned glum. “Chloe Corbett volunteered to be his study partner.”

“And that’s a problem?”

Kyra frowned, bits of scallion flying from the end of her knife. “She’s such a bitch!”

“Language,” Camille chided.

Kyra stood with her knife poised in midair as if she’d like to bring it down on Chloe Corbett’s pinkie. “Sorry, but she
is
. She’s so pushy. She put her hand up before anyone else could.”

“Maybe you should’ve been a little quicker.”

“Mom! You act like it’s my fault.” Kyra’s brown eyes flashed with indignation.

“It’s not a case of being at fault, sweetie. You know the saying
All things come to he who waits
? Well, it’s a crock. If you want something, you have to grab it before someone else does.”

“How do I know if he even likes me?”

“You won’t know if you don’t go to the trouble to find out.”

Kyra’s shoulders slumped. “Chloe is prettier than I am.”

“Not true. You’re way prettier.”
You just don’t know it yet.

“You’re only saying that because you’re my mom.”

“I also know what boys want. It’s what I do for a living, remember.”

Kyra said with mock gravity, “Mom, I’m only in ninth grade. I’m too young to get married.” Camille chuckled, but she was thinking that in some ways her daughter was more mature than other girls her age. She’d been through so much, more than any child should have to. No one knew better than Camille what it was to face the threat of losing a parent. A threat that had been realized, in her case. Would the same be true for her children? Her heart clenched at the thought.

Zach wandered in as she was taking the chicken out of the oven. Camille gave him the job of setting the table. “Should I set a place for Dad?” he asked hopefully as he was putting out plates and cutlery.

“Sure, but I don’t know if he’ll be back in time,” Camille told him.

Zach looked a little downcast but rallied as soon as they sat down to eat. At eight going on nine, he was like a half-grown Labrador puppy, all over the place when he wasn’t glued to the TV screen or some electronic device, with feet that were growing at twice the rate of his lanky frame. “Mom, guess what Ronnie got for his birthday?” he said excitedly as he was reaching into the breadbasket. Ronnie Chu was his best friend at school. “An iPhone!” he announced before she could take a guess. He took a bite out of his bread. “It’s so awesome. You should see all the cool apps it has.”

“Lovely,” Camille muttered.

Zach went on, “Isn’t that the coolest present ever?” Bits of chewed bread flew from his mouth as he spoke.

Camille ignored the not-so-subtle hint. “Why? Do you know someone who has a birthday coming up?”

“Mooooom.” He gave an exaggerated roll of his eyes.

My son, heart of my hearts.
Camille recalled when Zach had entered the world nearly nine years ago, the joy she’d felt when the doctor announced, “It’s a boy!” Not that she wouldn’t have been as happy with another girl, but she’d always pictured herself with one of each. The complete family.

“Oh, it’s
your
birthday.” She smacked her forehead with the heel of her hand. “Geez, I almost forgot.”

“You didn’t
really
forget, did you?” Zach eyed her uncertainly.

If Kyra was the image of her dad, Zach was unmistakably the child of Camille’s womb. Auburn-haired, with Irish eyes that danced with mischief even when he wasn’t misbehaving and a mouth that frequently got him in trouble with his teachers at school. She took in the spray of freckles over his snub nose, the pouty lower lip and long eyelashes that would break hearts someday, the cowlick that made him look like a pint-size sixties doo-wop singer. A sense of impending doom slammed through her with the force of a freight train.
How can I bear it? How will
they
bear it?

“Of course she didn’t forget, you moron,” said Kyra, giving her brother a playful swat.

“Can I have an iPhone? Please, Mom?” Zach begged openly, gyrating in his chair like when he had to go to the bathroom. “I swear I’ll never ask for anything again the whole rest of my life.”

“That’s, like, seventy more years going by the average life expectancy,” Kyra pointed out in a dry, pedantic tone. She sounded so much like her father, it brought a thin smile to Camille’s lips.

Zach, ignoring her, continued to plead, “Can I? Please?”

“It’s ‘may’ not ‘can,’ and no, you may not,” said Camille.

Zach’s lower lip edged out. “Give me one good reason.”

“I’ll give you two: One, it’s not a toy, and two, you’re too young. In a year or two, maybe we’ll consider it.”

You may not be here in a year,
whispered a voice in her head. She almost relented then. Why deny him? But she knew she had to stand firm. Experience had taught her that consistency was key.

“That is so unfair!” cried Zach, throwing his fork down with a clatter.

Life is unfair. Get used to it.

But she only said mildly, “I know someone who won’t be getting dessert if he doesn’t stop acting up.”

Zach gave her a mutinous look. But it didn’t stop him from asking, “What’s for dessert?”

“You won’t know if you don’t behave. But I’ll give you a hint: It’s chocolate.” Camille had stopped at Sarabeth’s on her way home. “I’ll even throw in a kiss on the house if you’re
really
good.”

This time, when Zach protested “Moooom,” he was grinning as he said it.

After supper, the kids helped clean up, then they all changed into their pj’s and piled onto the sofa to watch
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1
on DVD for the umpteenth time. Normally, Camille spent the hours before bedtime helping her children with their homework. Sometimes they played games—Scrabble or Pictionary or Chinese checkers—the kind that would keep their brains from going digital and remind them they were a family, not just a group of people who happened to live together under one roof. But tonight, a movie was all she was up for. Bookended by Zach and Kyra, she gladly gave herself over to the action on-screen.