The Pretend Wife (11 page)

E
LLIOT PULLED DOWN A
long gravel driveway lined by a white split-rail fence. There was a stand of trees that opened onto a field and at the edge of the field stood the house. It was tall and lean with weathered cedar shingles and blue shutters. One of the upstairs windows was open and there was a gauzy white curtain rippling like a veil as if there were a real bride somewhere in the house.

As Elliot parked at the side of the house, I looked down a sloping lawn that led to the lake. It was a beautiful body of water that made me think of the word
body
—curving and stretching as it did from the Hulls' tall grass bank to the far side where other houses were nestled in the woods.

The Hulls had a dock wedged into the bank with orange rowboats on either side. There were two Adirondack chairs situated on the dock, facing out. Bird feeders made from gourds painted a bright yellow bobbed in nearby trees. There was an old wooden shed off to the right with a sway-back roof. A fishing net hung from a hook on its front door. In the distance, motorboats were revving their engines.

I got out and stood there on the lawn for a moment, until Elliot walked up behind me. “So this is it. The famous lake house,” I said.

He looked at me, surprised. “Did I talk about it a lot?”

I nodded.

“Did I overhype it?”

“No,” I said. I used to imagine a young Elliot Hull mucking around on the muddy bank—one of those kids who talk to themselves while playing, acting out all the various parts. It was, in fact, a dreamy place—the expansive blue sky and blue water, the dragonflies, the yard, the grand house. “What kind of sickness did you have as a kid?”

“Asthmatic,” he said. “They brought me here to air out. I used to pee off the dock.”

“Everything seems so alive.”

“You're surrounded by a lot of little heartbeats out here,” he said. “Everything's got a pulse.”

“I've been in cities for too long,” I said, looking at the rippling lake. I felt serene, like I could say anything. “I imagine you took Ellen Maddox out here.”

“Ellen Maddox. It's been a long time since I heard that name. My mother didn't like her. She didn't like Claire either.”

“Did she throw any engagement parties for you out here?” I pictured a few big white tents, caterers, white balloons tied to chair backs.

“Claire and I both kept putting off an engagement party, and then it was over.” He shrugged. “And with Ellen, it wasn't a serious proposal. We were twenty-two. And then there was that trip she took to her grandfather's funeral out west. And the flight attendant.”

“What if her grandfather hadn't died?” I asked.

“He was very sick,” Elliot said, “and old. He was like ninety. He'd have died of something else by now.”

“What if she hadn't met the flight attendant? That's what I mean.”

“There'd have been some other flight attendant,” he said. “Figuratively speaking.”

“Figuratively speaking,” I said. “I'm living a figurative existence right now. Everything I say is figurative.
I'm
figurative.” I realized that this was one of the reasons I felt so calm and liberated. Nothing was quite real.

But Elliot was agitated. He said, “I have a story for you.”

“Okay.”

He looked out at the dock and then his eyes skittered across the lawn. “The other day, I ran into someone I knew at the grocery store here in town. We'd been on a summer league soccer team together. He was shopping with a kid in one of those baby seats and another kid who was pulling things off the shelf, and his cart was overflowing. I'd come in to buy a lime. I was tossing a lime into the air and catching it. And it seemed so sad to me. A lime. One lousy lime. I wanted a gin and tonic. And he said, ‘I remember when I used to come to the store to buy one thing. Don't rub it in.' And I said, ‘Don't
you
rub it in.' And he didn't understand what I meant so he laughed like he got the joke.”

“But there was no joke.” I knew what he meant. I'd seen those families in the store too—the exhausted mothers who seemed to have a hundred arms juggling pacifiers and cans of beans and little Ziploc bags of Cheerios. I'd watched them while holding my little handheld basket of shampoo, and had felt a strange mix of sympathy and jealousy.

“No,” he said.

“You felt like he was rubbing it in—the kids, the full grocery cart?”

“His mother was probably fine too. Not even close to almost dying.”

“And his wife was probably real.”

“Probably.”

“I know how that feels,” I said.

He stuffed his hands into his pockets. “I think that's one of the reasons I want you here. Not just for the lying part. But because I thought you might understand.”

“Every loss is different,” I said, trying to shake off the responsibility.

“I don't know about that. I mean, in the end, the feeling you're left with, it loses its particulars. I think loss is loss …”

“… is loss.”

We were silent for a minute and then a little girl walked around the far corner of the house. She was boxy and dark-haired, holding a bucket up over one shoulder like a pocketbook. She was wearing soccer shorts and rubber boots and a tie-dye shirt. She squinted at us as if a little nearsighted and then trudged over. She put the bucket down at her feet and said, “Mom sent away for that kit, Elliot. And it came in the mail.” She turned to me. “The kit is of a mouse that an owl ate and then regurgitated its skeleton. Regurgitated means throwing up.”

“Oh,” I said. “That's kind of cool.”

“Bib, this is Elizabeth.”

“Hi,” Bib said, squinting at my face for a second, then turning back to Elliot. “It's on the hall table because Mom won't let me put it on the kitchen table where there's bet
ter light.” She turned to me again to explain. “I use tweezers and I wear gloves. The mouse is
fully
dead.”

“Bib has a very focused mind,” Elliot said.

“What's the bucket for?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I'm out looking for specimens. I pick them up with a stick though. Don't worry.”

“Found anything today?”

“Not really.”

“How's everything in the house?” Elliot asked, his eyes searching the windows.

“Porcupine is taking his nap. He regurgitated this morning on me.” She pointed to a spot on her tie-dye. “And Grandma is taking a nap too. But I think everyone will wake up soon.” She hitched the bucket over her shoulder again.

“Nice to meet you,” I said.

She nodded. “We have a nesting eagle and eagles can pick up a baby sheep up to twenty pounds and just carry it away. Right up off its feet. Its
hooves.
You should be careful.”

“Luckily, I weigh more than twenty pounds,” I said.

“But still,” she said.

“You're absolutely right.”

“An eagle could lift Porcupine,” she said, without much expression, as if this wouldn't be the worst thing that could happen. “Lift him right up to the sky.” She walked away.

“That is Bib,” Elliot said. “She goes to a school that encourages kids who are, well, hyperbright.”

“She seems very smart.”

“She's too smart.”

“So,” I said.

“So,” he said.

“We should go in?”

“I guess we should. There are some gift-wrapped toasters waiting to be set loose into the world.”

“Let's liberate the toasters,” I said.

He shook his head and took a few steps toward the lake. “That wasn't the story I had to tell you, about the guy in the grocery store.”

“It wasn't?”

“It's a story, sure. It's something I've thought about, but it isn't the story I was going to tell you when I said that I had a story to tell you.” He was quiet a moment then, looking at the grass like he'd lost something there. “I saw you through the plate-glass window of the ice-cream shop. I was walking by and I saw you standing there, in line. It was like a vision and I stopped dead and my heart was pounding. I can't explain it, but it felt suddenly like I'd been looking for you everywhere for years, but I didn't know it. And then I found you. And I was wondering what to do—not about whether or not to go in but instead, I don't know, I think I was standing there waiting to figure out what kind of person I am. Weird time to be thinking about it, I guess.”

I imagined him there now, watching me, standing on the sidewalk in his baggy shorts and his ball cap. Hadn't I felt the same thing, that Elliot Hull had finally shown up after all these years? But I couldn't tell him that. I was afraid of how much he'd confessed, of how much was suddenly laid bare between us. “What kind of person did you turn out to be?” I asked, fighting a tightness in my throat.

“I was so in love with you. You wrecked me for years. And I tried to fix it with Ellen Maddox and with Claire
and with women in between and even with philosophy, which I thought might give me some distance from things like you, well, from you … some lofty distance. But it didn't. Nothing fixed it. That's what I realized standing there—I was still in love with you, that I'd never stopped being in love with you.”

“What kind of person did you turn out to be?” I asked again. I didn't move. I was afraid that if I tried to take a step, I'd fall. My limbs felt like they were made of air. I watched Bib, who was walking through the reeds at the edge of the lake. There was something in her bucket now—maybe a rock. It made a hollow gong when she dropped it to her feet.

Elliot was pacing. “I turned out to be the kind of person who doesn't turn away and keep on walking down the street. I turned out to be the kind of person who goes in and says something idiotic like ordering two scoops of you and then begs my way into your life.”

I wasn't sure what to say. I was afraid of saying anything that might lead him on. But, at the same time, I was exhilarated that he was the kind of person who didn't turn away. “Is this why I'm here? Did you plan all of this?”

“No! I didn't know that this would happen. I'm not a mastermind. Who could have arranged all of this?” He waved his arm with a swooping gesture. “I lied to my mother. She is dying. It wasn't even my idea that you come here.” He thought about this for a moment and then shook his finger. “But I might have willed you here. Some people believe in that kind of thing, although I've never willed anything to happen before.” Then he thought for a moment. “Put it this way: I'd have willed it if I could have. I'm guilty of that.”

There was a nice breeze and I could see Bib squatting
on the muddy bank, poking something with a stick. Was I still in love with Elliot Hull? Was that what I'd felt in the ice-cream shop? Love? If it was love, it was also mixed with fear. Elliot still terrified me. This story he was telling me—who would confess such a thing at a moment like this? I suddenly felt angry. “Why are you telling me this?” I asked, my voice rising. “Why now? Why can't you just let things progress, the way normal people do? Why can't you just …” Was I going to ask him to put his love in packets and dole it out incrementally? I stopped short. I knew that this would never happen. This was Elliot. This was the way he loved me.

“It's okay,” he said. “I'm not asking you to really respond. I had to tell you the truth. That's all.” He crossed his arms against his chest, looked at the ground and shook his head ruefully. He was conflicted and he wore the struggle openly in the restlessness of his body, his gestures. “It wouldn't be fair to ask you to go inside if you didn't know that story. It wouldn't have been fair. We can get back in the car. I can drive you back to the city if you want or put you on a train … or you can come inside.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, and when I opened them, he was still standing there, waiting for me. “Let's concentrate on the lie,” I said. “Let's just stick to that.”

A
ND NOW
,
WE WALKED
up the back steps of the deck and through the French doors into the kitchen. We were both unsteady, and I thought that we had a kind of nervousness that might just seem like the authentic nervousness of newlyweds who've eloped and are now introducing each other to family for the first time.

We stood uncertainly in the kitchen. Jennifer was washing Porcupine in one side of the double sink. I could see his wet head and one pink, plump arm. She hadn't noticed us yet so, not knowing quite how to start, we were glancing at each other. There was the lingering weight of Elliot's confession, the
story
he'd told me, and each glance felt like that weight was shifting between us.

Against one wall was a white sofa with bright pillows, which seemed out of place in a kitchen, but then why not have a sofa in the kitchen? Books were everywhere. Built-in bookshelves took up one wall—where someone else might have put extra cabinets. Books were also littered on the counter and on the kitchen table, and there was a small stack on the sofa itself. Most sat, spine-up, in various
stages of arrest. I could hear Eila in my mind saying, “Clutter, clutter, clutter! No one wants to inherit all of your junk, even psychically!” She was no fan of books. If there was a bookshelf, she'd take the books out and put in vases. I knew she'd fuss about the wall of family photos too. And it didn't help that they were all in different-size frames. “People have enough family! No one wants to buy your baggage along with the house!” But these photos weren't staged or even the normal frame after frame of smiling people dressed up for various occasions—the kinds of photos I've always been jealous of. My graduation photo, for example, is a lonesome shot of me and my father taken at a great distance, likely by another student, the two of us standing there next to each other, but with a damning inch of space between our boxy shoulders.

These photos were completely different. There was a picture of Jennifer holding a scratched-up knee; another with her squeezing a lanky cat. There was a photo of Elliot as a four-year-old, squatting over what looked to be a dead bird, examining it very happily, like a joyous scientist who just made a groundbreaking discovery; and another of him as a teenager, slumping in an armchair, with a look of abject disenfranchisement on his face—the brooder! There was a photo of an old woman in waders, and some old men standing in front of bushels of tomatoes. There was one startlingly beautiful picture of Elliot's mother, Vivian—almost the way I remember her—standing in this very kitchen, on one leg, trying to hitch up the slingback of a high heel. There was another photo that must have been taken from one of the upstairs bedroom windows. In fact, on one side of the photo there was the rippled edge of a thin curtain, a ghostly ribbon. It was a picture of the
grassy lawn, the dock, and in the corner the little shed. It was summer. In the photo, Vivian was wearing a white one-piece and a large straw hat. Jennifer was barely walking age, wearing a ruffled skirt and no shirt, and Elliot was a scrawny boy in a white T-shirt and swim trunks. The person who took the photo must have called to them first—they were all looking up at the window. Elliot had one hand cupped at his forehead to block the sun, fishing rods sitting at his muddy feet. Vivian was pointing out the person in the upper window to Jennifer who was waving. They'd been caught in the middle of the afternoon on an ordinary day, sun struck, beautiful. Vivian's face is slightly clouded—does she love the person in the window? It's hard to say.

I adored the photos, every one of them, and the mismatched frames—the history of quiet honest moments that they represented, the history of a real family. Eila was wrong. Sometimes people do want to inherit your junk, even psychically, and some people don't have enough family.

Jennifer, who was humming to the baby, turned off the faucet and lifted him out of the sink. Elliot bounded forward then, grabbing a thick bath towel off the back of a kitchen chair. “Here you go,” he said. The baby looked slippery and fat. He had a rubbery slickness that reminded me of a seal.

“You're here!” Jennifer said to me, relieved. She wrapped the baby up in the towel and wiped her long bangs out of her eyes. She was stunning—one of those naturally rosy women who, without any makeup, look like they have on blush and lipstick. She was wearing a flower-print top that had a retro-hippie vibe and shorts. She was
barefoot. I remembered the picture of her in the yellow life preserver with her tan face, streaky blond hair, and a big wry smile. She'd barely changed.

“Yep,” Elliot confirmed. “Jennifer, this is Gwen, who we'll be calling Elizabeth. Elizabeth, Jennifer.”

“It's so great that you came.” She rushed over, propping the baby up on one shoulder. She hugged me, wet warm baby and all. I wasn't expecting it, and I almost tripped backwards onto the sofa. “Thanks for doing this,” she said. “It's strange but, well, she was on a tear. She was on a real tear, wasn't she, Elliot?” I assumed she meant their mother was on a tear, but I wasn't sure what kind of tear exactly. Elliot nodded. Porcupine had found one of his ears and was playing with it, pinching it open and shut. He was a beautiful baby, big-eyed, full of chins, and drooling. “Do you want something to drink?” Jennifer asked. “Are you hungry?”

I was too nervous to eat. “I'm fine. Thanks.”

“This is overwhelming though, isn't it?” she asked.

“It's okay,” I said. “I met Bib. She's a very interesting kid.”

“Did she warn you about the eagles?” she asked.

“She gave me a stern warning,” I said.

“I think she's a little terrified of the eagles.”

“Well, they can lift a twenty-pound sheep off its hooves,” I said.

“That is terrifying to the smaller creatures,” Elliot said.

Jennifer looked out the French doors. “She's out there with that bucket. It'll be full of who-knows-what by the end of the day.”

“I heard that the regurgitated mouse came!” Elliot said.

“Oh, yes,” Jennifer said, not so keen on the regurgitated mouse. “Nothing could be more delightful.” She looked down at her bare feet, patted Porcupine's towel-covered rump, and then looked at me, her eyes round and wet. “I was there when Elliot invented the marriage,” she confided quietly. “And when he said he was married, I was as relieved as Mom was. I didn't believe him—not in reality—but he was so convincing that part of me did believe him, wholeheartedly. And he was right. It was the right thing to do. She was on a tear about not being able to die in peace because Elliot was adrift in the world and had no anchor. It was the only thing to do. We were pretty sure that she wouldn't make it through the weekend, but then she did.”

“It's strange,” Elliot said to Jennifer. “Don't you think? I mean, she's been her own anchor for decades. I don't know why she thinks I need an anchor.”

“You could use an anchor,” Jennifer said wryly, and then she said to me, “He really did do the right thing. Thanks for being here.”

“You're welcome,” I said.

“Elizabeth Calendar,” Elliot said, “my wife!”

I turned and looked at Elliot. He was smiling at me with his head tilted. I wanted to smile too. In fact, I think I did, just a little, but then stopped myself and tried to divert some attention from his announcement. “I kept my own name?”

“You did,” he said. “You're very proud of your heritage, I think. You come from cow herders and fig farmers. And you're a true feminist.”

“Am I?”

“You can be anything you want to be.”

“A chain-smoking Commie?”

He shrugged. “Why not?”

“Thanks, comrade,” I said. “I've always wanted to smoke Gauloises and shout
‘Vive la révolution'
from a balcony.”

“We have a balcony,” Elliot said.

“Excellent.”

Jennifer rubbed the fuzz on Porcupine's head so that it fluffed like a baby chick's. “She's dozing in the living room. There was a new hospice nurse who just finished up a little bit ago. Her name's Chesa. She's really great. They're all great. I went out and got the sweet potatoes she said she wanted. We'll see if she can eat some.” Her voice was suddenly a little fraught, as if she was trying to sound casual but not quite getting away with it. “I'm going to get the baby dressed,” she said. “You two can have some private time with her. Let me know if she needs anything.”

“We'll be fine,” Elliot said.

Porcupine started arching, then wailing. “He's an alarm,” Jennifer said. “Time's up!” She jiggled him a little and walked quickly out of the kitchen.

“She's beautiful,” I said to Elliot. “And Porcupine is very fuzzy.”

But Elliot didn't hear me. He'd walked to the edge of the kitchen and was leaning against the doorway. I followed him and looked where he was looking—at the hospital bed situated in the warm sun streaming through a bay window. I could see his mother lying there, a thin body covered with a pale blue sheet, her head turned to one side, her eyes closed. Her hair was white and smooth, blending into the pillow.

“She doesn't look like a Kennedy anymore,” Elliot said. “I barely recognize her until she talks … and then I
know it's her. She has a way of putting things … But from here …” And for the first time I saw the depth of Elliot's sadness. He loved his mother. He was heartsore and he wasn't going to hide it. Elliot was here, in the pain of it. And Peter? Was it even fair to compare him to Peter? It wasn't fair, but it's what my mind did, naturally. I'd never seen Peter really sad. It was the difference between seeing a map and seeing the land itself.

“Let's go in,” I said.

As if she'd heard us, Vivian opened her eyes and looked at us. She raised her hand, just a bit above the sheet, and waved us forward.

We both walked to her bedside. She pushed a button on the guardrails and the bed buzzed into a seated position.

“Mom,” Elliot said. “This is Elizabeth. And this is my mother, Vivian.”

She was weary but there was still brightness in her eyes, and she had the most elegant nose and long neck. She held out both of her hands, palms up. I put my hands in hers and in that small gesture, I felt like I was handing over some essential part of myself. It was so intimate and quiet. I trusted her immediately.

She squinted at me, as if reading my face, not unlike Bib. In fact, there was a brief moment in which I could see Bib in her distinctly. And then she took in my face and said, with strong conviction, “Oh, look! He found you.” For a moment, I wondered if she recognized me—Gwen Merchant—from the cookies-and-punch reception over ten years earlier. I felt a whirl of panic in my chest, realizing that maybe it was already all over, that we'd been caught. I looked at Elliot. His eyes darted to me too, and he pursed his lips, poised to correct her, but then she
almost sang, “
Elizabeth. Elizabeth.
I've been waiting for you to arrive.” She turned to Elliot. “Get my glasses off the side table. I want to see the ring.”

Of course she would want to see the ring, but for some reason I hadn't thought of it. She put on her glasses, tilted her chin up, and gazed down at my hand through her bifocals. “Oh, it's beautiful. You picked this out? My stripes-and-plaid son?” she said to Elliot. “I've never thought of you as having fine taste in jewels.”

“I have
some
taste though,” he said.

“I helped pick it out,” I said, and I had, this was true. It was unromantic, but Peter had been practical about it.
You're going to have to wear this for the rest of your life,
he'd said.
So let's make sure it's something you actually like.

“And nicely done,” Vivian said, and then she took off her glasses, folded them up, and laid them on her frail chest. “I'd like to get down to brass tacks,” she said. “I'm no longer interested in the breezy conversations of the healthy, wasting their time with idle banter that plods and piddles, amounting to nothing but vague weather reports.” Elliot was right. No one quite spoke the way she did—not just what she said but how she said it. She'd emphasize this word and that, in ways that honed the meaning, but there was also some lingering speech impediment that I couldn't put my finger on. It could have been that the meds she was on—morphine for one—were causing her muscles to go a little slack, but it also seemed like her mouth had been trained to work around some difficult
s
's or
r
's. But the old problem would sometimes creep in and make a consonant sound thicker, fuller than it should. She spoke succinctly and elegantly. I assumed that she spoke this way because maybe the books were all hers and she'd
read them. The living room too was lined with bookshelves. There were armchairs and standing lamps—all of which seemed to invite someone to sit and read.

And almost every surface was covered with flowers. There was a fireplace in the living room and its brick front was blocked by tall vases. Arrangements with notes sticking out of them on plastic stalks were sitting everywhere except the bedside tables, which were devoted to medical essentials—pill bottles, ointments, tissues.

“I don't think we need brass tacks just yet,” Elliot said. “How about icebreakers?”

“That's what I don't have time for, Elliot. You know that.”

“Brass tacks,” I said. “That's fine. What do you want to talk about?”

“You,” she said.

“What do you want to know?” I glanced at Elliot nervously.

“Do you want to have kids?” she asked.

“See, now that seems kind of personal,” Elliot interrupted.

She looked at Elliot sharply. “I want to know if I'll have more heirs one day. I don't think that's too personal!” And then she turned to me and said, “Is that too personal?”