Four Wives (2 page)

T
HROUGH THE OPEN BEDROOM
door, Love heard the baby crying. She fumbled for her glasses on the night table and checked the time. For the shortest of moments she hoped for four o’clock, though the fog inside her head was thicker than a 4
A.M.
wake-up. It felt more like three, definitely not five. At five o’clock she could actually hold a thought together. She would not hope for five, only to be disappointed. But
two?
The red numbers did not lie: 2:15 glared at her from the small black box. It was no better than the night before, and an hour worse than the one before that. It was regression, and in the face of sleep deprivation that was now chronic, she could feel the frustration taking over her entire being. This child was
never
going to sleep through the night.

She untangled herself from the appendages of her sleeping husband, pushing off the limbs that felt like dead weights around her. She pulled the covers back and walked around the bed. The room was a small converted study, and even their double mattress frame had trouble staying out of the way when she made these walks in the darkness. She turned sideways at the foot of the bed, her back pressed to the wall. As she shuffled through the confined space, she wondered how the man had slept through it. First, it had been three-year-old Jessica. At midnight, she’d wet through her pull-up. The bed, the child’all of it needed to be changed. Now, the baby was having a turn.

The crying stopped for a moment. Baby Will was listening for her footsteps. Not hearing them, he turned it up a notch. Love continued her shuffle to the door, studying the figure under the covers, the rise and fall of the large lump in the bed. He really was dead asleep.
Confounding,
she thought. It was simply the nature of his world, she supposed, a world apart from hers’work, eat, sleep. It was a world where someone
else
woke up in the middle of the night, where someone
else
remembered when to feed them, what to pack for school, to watch them in the tub so they didn’t drown. These things were decidedly on her, and lately she felt wholly incapable of tending to them.

In the hallway, the dim glow from the nightlight cast shadows on the wall, images she knew well after six years of answering the calls of her children. The huge black stripes from the stair rail cast to her left, and the outline of her own round, pudgy shape always keeping one step ahead of her as she walked to the nursery. Time might as well be standing still. Will was seven months old now. The grace period was over for the baby weight, but there it remained. Twenty pounds of flesh that hadn’t budged. It was unforgivable. Not just because it was a testament to her weakness for bakery items. Or evidence of their relative poverty in a town where every self-respecting housewife had a nanny and personal trainer. She was the doctor’s wife’people understood that she didn’t have access to the things that help afforded, what with managed care and all. Not that being a doctor didn’t carry the respect it always had. Doctors, lawyers’the years of training required to earn a professional degree still impressed people. There just wasn’t any money in it, at least not the kind needed to keep up in this town. Hunting Ridge was driven by careers in Manhattan’s financial institutions. Tens of millions in accumulated wealth was commonplace, so much so that its relative enormity was no longer recognized. Just over a million dollars had bought Love and Dr. Harrison a house and a ticket into the superb school system. But it hadn’t been enough to buy a room for each child, or sufficient floor space to accommodate even a queen-sized bed. Crammed into their tiny house with two kids bunked in the old master bedroom and one in a modest nursery, looking after three children and eating bagels and donuts and leftover mac-and-cheese because she was too tired to inspire even a trace of will power’it was no wonder the doctor’s wife couldn’t get the fat off her ass.

Still, for Love it ran deeper. She wasn’t just an overweight housewife living in the “poor” part of town. If she were just that, it might be bearable. If she had not fallen so far from what she had once been, there would not be this bone-deep humiliation. Rather, there might be acceptance, contentment that all was as it should be.
Yes,
she might be thinking,
this is how I always thought I would turn out.
But that was not the case. She was miles from where the old Love Welsh had been, and the distance grew with every day she remained on this trajectory of marriage and motherhood. Miles from the career she had imagined for herself as a child. Miles from the excitement and fulfillment she had expected would fill her day-to-day life. It was more than two decades gone, the possibility of that existence, but it still lingered inside her. Tormenting her at moments like these.

Of course, she had still grown up, and into quite an attractive woman. She was tall like her father, with the long, wavy auburn hair of her mother. Her hips had curves that were accentuated by long legs, and her face had beautiful structure. All of this was still with her now’the basic scaffolding that made the person. But to Love, who saw none of these virtues in herself, it was simple. She had been a golden girl. Now she was a pudgy shadow on the wall.

She opened the door to the nursery, then quickly got out of its way so she could close it again and contain the noise. She looked into the crib. Baby Will was flailing’arms and legs reaching for the sky as if they could somehow grasp an invisible rope to facilitate an escape. His cries were loud and now interspersed with gasps of breath.
Gasp … cry … gasp … cry.
It was desperate. And it got Love every time.

She reached down and lifted him out of the crib, eliciting a vice grip of little arms around her. He nuzzled his face deep into her neck, and she whispered in his ear and kissed his cheek.
Mommy’s here.

With a slimy wetness now reaching from her face to her shoulder, Love sat down in the rocker and held him tight until his sobs turned to deep sighs.
What took you so long?
they seemed to say, and the guilt found its place inside her. She knew what she was supposed to do now. Put him back in the crib. Leave the room. Let him cry for ten minutes.
Repeat torture of child until child cries himself to sleep.
And though it wasn’t in her to do it, she knew from the pounding in her head that it was either Baby Will or her. And it made her thoughts drift toward things existential, questions about the Divine Creator, mastermind of the universe, who had placed a mother’s needs against those of her child. But these were thoughts for another time. At the moment, she had a choice to make. Someone was going to have to suffer.

After a short while, the infant loosened his arms from his mother’s neck, then reached with his whole body for her chest. His hands patted her breasts and he started the sobbing again. She thought about the rules.
Whatever you do, don ’tfeed him.
She pulled him close to her and rubbed his back. “Shhhhhh,” she whispered. He was barely out of the womb. Ripped from his safe haven where he hadn’t wanted for a damned thing. Now everything he wanted she was supposed to withhold.
Don’t rock him. Don’t nurse him at night. Don’t give in.
Why had raising children become about denying them the very things they craved?

To hell with it.
She lifted her shirt and put Baby Will on her breast. His body melted like a chocolate bar in the sun, molding around her until every part of him was touching her. One arm wrapped around her back and the other reached out for her face, resting on her cheek. Through the fog in her head and the bewildered resentment at the mysterious force that created humanity, Love couldn’t hold back a smile as she watched her baby’s eyes roll back in his head before closing. He was nothing short of blissful, doing what he did best’sucking on his mother, filling his tummy. He was satisfied. And she was a complete failure.

Settling into the state of defeat’a familiar place now’Love kissed Baby Will’s hand, then rested it on her chest. She closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but the adrenaline had begun to flow and now had her heart racing. Rocking back and forth with the baby in her arms, she could feel the love here, the truest kind, the kind that forces its way inside the most stubborn soul and takes root. And it filled up every space inside of her, except the one that could not be penetrated.

It always came in these moments of peace, when the house was quiet and she was alone in the conscious world. At night, that was when it came’the disoriented,
where the hell am I?
feeling that somehow managed to coexist within her, right next to the fierce devotion she held for her children. The baby in her arms, the two curled up next door’Jessica with her stuffed pig and Henry with his Lego directions under the pillow. It felt inhuman to not be content. But there it was just the same. The haunting force of her other life.

On most nights she didn’t fight it, letting her mind go as it so liked to do’wandering beyond the facade of certainty she maintained in the daylight. Back in time it would carry her, changing things that could not be changed. Sitting in the darkness, her wits not fully alert, she could think of how her career ended without feeling the monstrous shame that generally kept her away from the subject. She could picture her life laid out as a sto-ryboard. One after another, years were erased and rewritten with stories of unprecedented achievement and the humble admiration of her famous father,
the Great Alexander Rice.
It was a fantasy thought cocktail’a weaving together of truth and untruth’that on most nights settled her nerves.

But not tonight. The regrets of the past, along with the fragments of hope that she might someday reclaim her destiny, could no longer be indulged. Instead, tonight, her body was trapped in a kind of shock. She thought about the letter tucked away in a kitchen drawer, buried within a pile of papers no one ever bothered to sort out. She could see her father’s handwriting on the page, and through some kind of visceral subconscious connection, she could smell his cologne from nearly twenty-two years ago’the last time she’d seen him. Was he really going to do this to her? Would he expose her after all these years? Her secret, the one she kept hidden beneath this life, had become over the years a muddy river of memories and emotion that now flooded her body. She pictured her friends, what their faces would look like when they learned the truth about her. She imagined the agony it would inflict upon her husband, having thought all this time that he had seen her darkest corners and swept them clean. And she wondered how long it would take to reach her children.

With her sweet baby now fast asleep in her arms and her heart pounding within the walls of her chest, she could feel the fear inside her, searching for a place to take hold. From the moment she’d opened that letter, it had been growing like a fungus, corrupting her body, her mind. And she could not help but wonder if it was her own desire, her midnight fantasies of being more than what she had become, that had brought this about. She was her father’s child, no matter how much time was now between them. That his letter had arrived just as her desires had begun to resurface seemed more than coincidental. Yet it could not be more than that. For all his vast talents, Alexander Rice was not psychic. His letter was about nothing but himself, his world and his desires. Still, it was within this letter, and all that it held, that Love was beginning to sense her own undoing.

G
AYLE HAYWOOD BECK HEARD
the soft click of the brass door latch. Light from the hall sifted into the bedroom as the door swung open, then disappeared again. Across the floorboards, she heard him walk slowly past the bed, through the sitting area into his dressing room. Another door closed, then the light from the dressing room appeared from under the door.

Lying still, Gayle strained her eyes to read the clock. It was well past two. Surely he would be tired. Through the closed door, she could hear him remove his clothing’the clicking of the belt latch, the shoes dropping to the floor, one and then the next. His starched shirt was unbuttoned, pulled from his body and tossed on top of his shoes, where it would be left for the maid to sort out in the morning. Then it was quiet. Lying in bed, waiting, Gayle could hear her heart pounding in her ears. Still, she closed her eyes and began to breathe deeply, feigning the breath of sleep.

He went next to the bathroom. First to brush his teeth, then into the shower. But only for a moment. The room fell dark again. She heard the floorboards give way to steps as he approached their bed, then the pull of the covers as he crawled in on the other side. She could smell him now, the crisp lavender soap on his skin, his wet hair, mint toothpaste. She heard him sigh and roll over, settling into the bed to sleep, and it sparked a wave of relief that was nearly euphoric.

How quickly these moments came and went now, how easily her emotions were pushed and pulled by even the smallest event. First, there’d been the anticipation.
Is he coming home tonight?
It was so much easier when she knew from the start, when he gave her some kind of schedule. She could gauge her mood, her tolerance for her husband that night, and make the decision which pill to take, and how many.

She thought about the pills now, sorted carefully in small brown prescription bottles in the bottom drawer of her vanity. Dr. Theodore Lerner’ known affectionately as Dr. Ted to Gayle and the rest of the Haywood clan’had written out the instructions with great care and precision. Two blue Zoloft with breakfast. One white Xanax at lunchtime to prevent the afternoon anxiety. Then, if needed, Ambien just before bedtime. The regimen had started as just that’a strict menu of mood-altering drugs. Of course, over the years, Gayle had taken to some experimentation to see how much relief she could actually squeeze out of these resources, and she had become quite skilled as her own personal pharmacist. She took the Zoloft, a popular antidepressant, as written. Its effects were subtle and constant, making it useless for any immediate purposes. The Xanax was another story. There were some afternoons when two or three made their way out of the bottle, and others when she skipped it altogether. In the early evenings she could multiply their effectiveness with a glass of wine or a nice martini. She was careful not to overdo’rehab would not be good for someone as visible as Gayle Haywood Beck. She knew what she needed, when she needed it. Two Xanax and a drink usually made it possible to be Troy’s wife, and this was why it was so crucial to know her husband’s schedule.

Tonight had been left open. Troy had been invited to a late afternoon golf outing at the club, followed by a cigar dinner. Those always went late, and Gayle counted on this. But for some infuriating reason, he wouldn’t give her an answer as to whether or not he would attend.

“Does it really matter?” he’d asked after her third call to the office.

She’d made the excuse that she needed to let their cook know about dinner. “If you go out, I may have Paul make me a sandwich.”

He’d held out until nearly four o’clock, calling on his cell as he made his way back from the city. He was going to play after all, and stay for the dinner. It seemed like months ago, the blissful relief that had come at four o’clock. She’d skipped the Xanax and enjoyed just one glass of wine after her son went to sleep. Now it was the middle of the night, the drugs were out of reach, and Troy was home in their bed.

The scent of his favorite soap’his signature in Gayle’s mind’filled her nostrils as she inhaled, provoking a memory that struck like a fist to her gut. It was a memory of another time, the first time she’d smelled that smell, a time when she’d found it enticing, even comforting. That this same scent now made her recoil with fear was the very dilemma that formed the base of her illness.

The sessions with Dr. Ted had helped her understand this’the acute frailty of her demeanor’the underlying condition that her mother had always reminded her of. This was life. Marriage was tough. Ups and downs. Good and bad. Troy had his
issues.
What man wouldn’t be affected by a wealthy wife? The evidence was all around her, at the book groups and luncheons, the charity functions and bake sales’what woman was consistently happy in her marriage? They told her to take the pills and forgive herself for needing them to live a normal life. She had the first part down.

Troy Beck rolled over again, then cleared his throat. Across the mattress, his wife lay perfectly still, fighting to hold back the tears that might give her away. She calmed herself, breathing slowly, though her body was rigid, her every muscle tense as she prayed for him to fall asleep.