The Replacement Wife (13 page)

In the emergency room at Saint Mary’s, he bypassed the admissions desk, instead approaching a burly black man wearing a white lab coat who was seeing to one of the patients in the waiting area, a small girl with what looked to be a broken arm. “Please,” he croaked. It was all he could manage.

The next thing he knew, his grandmother was on a gurney. She had regained consciousness by then, and she smiled weakly up at him, rasping, “Ya big lug, you coulda got us both killed.”

She died the next day.

Now, as Edward gazed at his sleeping wife, the thought of her dying was almost more than he could bear.

Normally, Camille was the first to rise in the mornings; she usually had breakfast on the table before anyone else was up. But she hadn’t slept well last night. He’d been woken several times in the night by her tossing and turning and once by her crying out in her sleep. Even now, as she lay sound asleep, he could see, from the tight curl of her body, that whatever she was dreaming it wasn’t of happier days. A knot formed in his throat.
If only there was something I could do.

AS IF HE’D
expressed the thought aloud, she stirred and her eyelids fluttered open. At the sight of her husband standing over her, Camille was instantly awake. He looked so woebegone, her first thought was,
Someone died.
Then it hit her:
She
was that someone . . . or would be soon enough. Remembering, she felt the familiar despair descend on her like some crushing weight. But this time, the pain she felt was entirely for Edward. It tore at her seeing him this way. If only she could ease his burden! She longed to comfort the slump-shouldered man with the red-rimmed eyes.
I won’t let you face the future alone, my darling. Not if I can help it.

She sat up, squinting against the sunlight that slanted through the blinds. “What time is it?”

“Quarter to eleven.” He sat down next to her on the bed, smoothing her hair from her forehead. From the living room at the other end of the hall drifted the sounds of some video game being played—the roaring of engines and gnashing of gears, the
kaboom
of virtual car crashes.

She groaned. “Why didn’t you wake me?”

“I thought you could use the sleep. You were pretty restless last night.”

“Sorry. Did I keep you up?”

“Not at all,” he said, but she knew it was a lie. He looked tired.

She laid a hand on his cheek. “You’re a good husband.”

“I try.” He smiled at her. “While we’re on the subject, what would you say to breakfast in bed?”

She felt a pang, seeing how hard he was trying. “It’s a nice idea. But I’m more in need of a shower right now,” she told him.

“What do you say we go out for brunch, then?” he suggested. “The kids have eaten, but I’m sure they wouldn’t say no to pancakes.”

“You know what would make me even happier?”

“What?”

“If you’d come with me on Friday.”

“Why, what’s happening on Friday?”

“This month’s meet-and-greet.” She took note of his darkening expression and hurried to clear up any misunderstanding. “I just thought it’d be nice. We don’t spend enough time together.” Also, she thought, it would give him more of a feel for what she did for a living. He’d never been to one of the meet-and-greets and had attended only a handful of the weddings. Not that he was dismissive of what she did for a living, he just had no frame of reference. In the tight-knit community in which he’d grown up, there was always someone who knew of a nice girl or boy who’d be perfect for someone else’s son or daughter, so there was little need for professional matchmakers. He’d never said as much, but she knew it bothered him when clients phoned after hours needing moral support or reassurance and that he considered them more than a tad neurotic. Maybe if he saw how nice and normal most of them were, he’d be more open to the idea of—

“Thanks, but I’ll pass,” he said brusquely before she could complete the thought.

“Oh, Edward,” she beseeched. “Would it hurt, just this once?”

IF THE ROAD
to hell was paved with good intentions, Edward thought, its paving stones surely had those very words carved into them:
Just this once
. He knew if he agreed to this he would be signing on for more than an evening of socializing. Knowing Camille, she probably had someone in mind for him already. And if she couldn’t bring Mohammed to the mountain . . .

He opened his mouth to say no effing way, then he recalled Hugh’s advice. Was this what he wanted, to spend what might be his wife’s last days on Earth locked in combat? Perhaps it would be better, as Hugh had suggested, for them to join in a common purpose instead. He didn’t want to look back someday and wish he’d done it differently, nor did he want to add to his wife’s misery. Maybe if she had something to hold on to, if only the hope that her family wouldn’t be left rudderless after she was gone, it would make this more bearable for her. Or—a new thought occurred to him—what if her plan, once put into action, made her realize how wrongheaded it was?

Still, he resisted. In the past, whenever he and Camille had disagreed about something, they’d usually managed to strike a compromise. But this time, there could be no compromise. His goal was to get her to hang on and hers to get him to let go. Where was the middle ground in that?

CHAPTER SIX

A
ngie D’Amato had grown up believing herself to be unique in only one respect: She possessed none of the talents of her older sisters. She wasn’t musically gifted like Rosemary, nor was she athletic like Susanne. She didn’t have Julia’s beauty (which, given how Julia cultivated hers as if it were a rare hothouse flower, could be considered a talent), and she wasn’t a brain like Francine, whose SAT scores had earned her a full scholarship to Northwestern. The only thing Angie could do was cook.

“Angie, do me a favor and start supper,” her mom would say whenever she had errands to run or laundry to fold or one of Angie’s sisters needed to be picked up from some afterschool activity. So Angie would peel potatoes or boil macaroni or chop vegetables, and because her mother was forever running behind schedule, she’d usually end up preparing the entire meal. Over time, her family grew to expect it. “Angie! When’s supper going to be ready? My date’ll be here practically any minute!” Julia would yell over the droning of the blow-dryer. “Angie, would you make extra tonight? I’m having some of my teammates over,” Susanne would request as she breezed through the kitchen on her way to soccer practice. “God, Angie, not fish again! You’ll stink up the whole house,” Rosemary would bitch as she plied the piano keys. “If only you’d put as much effort into your homework,” Francine would say, shaking her head. If Angie’s father didn’t grouse or put in requests, it was only because he barely noticed what was on his plate as long as it was hot and there was plenty of it. The only real gratitude she ever got was from her mom. “My little chef. What would I do without you?” she’d say, pausing in the midst of her rushing around to drop a kiss on Angie’s cheek or dip a spoon into whatever was bubbling on the stove.

Angie didn’t mind; she enjoyed cooking. As the years passed, she progressed beyond the recipes scribbled on stained cards in her mother’s hand to the more complicated ones in cookbooks: snowcapped lamb chops, Oriental-style chicken, crab-stuffed sole. She learned to make rice perfectly each time, polenta that didn’t stick to the pot, biscuits as fluffy as the ones depicted in the photos. She used fresh herbs instead of the dried ones from the spice rack. Desserts were made from scratch: cookies, pies and cobblers, layer cakes frosted with buttercream. Her senior year of high school, while her friends were applying to colleges, Angie had her heart set on culinary school.

Before long, she was mastering preparations such as a
mirepoix
and a
brunoise
and learning the proper methods for braising, sautéing, and saucing. After graduating from the Culinary Institute, she went to work, moving up the ladder from
saucier
to line chef to
garde manger
and eventually
chef de cuisine
in restaurant kitchens in and around Manhattan over the next ten years. All the while, she dreamed of one day opening a restaurant of her own. Unfortunately, without a financial backer, it remained just that: a dream. So, at thirty, she started a catering business instead. In the eight years since, she hadn’t once regretted the decision. The hours sucked, her overhead gobbled up the lion’s share of her profits, and she was often busier than she would’ve liked, but she was her own boss and had free rein to create her own dishes instead of re-creating those of others.

One of her regular clients was the Harte to Heart agency; she’d been catering their monthly meet-and-greets for the past three years. She’d more or less stumbled onto the gig after a friend of hers had dragged her to one of the meet-and-greets as a guest. Angie had hit it off at once with the attractive, personable matchmaker who was hosting the event. When Camille, after learning what she did for a living, asked what she thought of the uninspired array of food on offer that evening, Angie wasn’t shy in giving her opinion along with her business card.

Camille glanced at the card. “‘A Catered Affair.’ I like it. And may I say,” she added with a wry smile, “tailor-made for this crowd.”

Angie was pleased by the show of interest and also intrigued by the venue, if only from the standpoint of an observer. “Do they ever find what they’re looking for?” she asked, glancing around the rented West Chelsea space at the attractive and obviously well-heeled singles, most around her age or a little older, all happily mingling.

“Most do, yes. If they’re in it for the right reasons,” Camille told her.

“What if you’re just unlucky in love?” At the time, Angie had just been dumped by Thierry, the French-Canadian
sous chef
at Langoustine, the last restaurant she’d worked at. Before him, there had been a string of other disappointments: Ben, the butcher, who could break down a side of beef in no time flat but didn’t know the first thing about women; the handsome and highly-sexed Darius whom she’d caught in bed with another man; Danny Osborn, the brilliant, temperamental chef who’d broken her heart when he took a job at a restaurant in L.A., informing her only after the fact, by email. And that wasn’t even counting the boys she’d burned her way through in high school.

“I believe we make our own luck. Especially in love.” The pretty, auburn-haired matchmaker lifted her wineglass to her lips, and as she did Angie took note of the gold band on her ring finger. Clearly she knew what she was talking about from a personal as well as professional standpoint.

“What’s the secret?” Angie adopted a casual tone so the matchmaker wouldn’t see her as a potential client.

“There’s no secret,” Camille said. “Mostly it’s about being open to possibilities. I’ve had people come to me with a list of requirements so long, no one could possibly measure up. I had one woman tell me the guy I’d fixed her up with would be perfect if only he didn’t have a mustache.”

“What did you say to that?”

“I told her to either get over it or get him to shave it off.”

Angie laughed. “You don’t mince words, do you?”

“That’s what they pay me for. I tell them what their friends won’t.”

“What if you don’t know what you’re looking for?”

“Believe me, you know when you find it.”

After Camille had drifted off to see to her other guests, Angie was left wondering if she would ever find her soul mate or even recognize him if she did. She’d since concluded that, while Mr. or Ms. Right might be out there for most, if not all, of the singles she encountered at the meet-and-greets (she’d witnessed enough hookups over the past three years to be convinced of it), a husband probably wasn’t in the cards for her. She hadn’t found anyone she loved enough to make that kind of commitment and, at thirty-eight, what were the chances she ever would? Besides, marriage wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, from what she could see. Her sisters were all married, and though they’d never in a million years admit it, Angie knew from the occasional comments they’d let slip that they felt they’d missed out in some ways. Francine, with her three children, the youngest still in diapers, and her job teaching middle school, was perpetually worn to a frazzle; Rosemary and her husband were currently in counseling; Susanne ran around like the Energizer Bunny, staying active in lieu of a once-promising athletic career (the closest she got to playing field these days was coaching her oldest son’s soccer team); and Julia’s attempts to get pregnant over the course of ten years and two husbands had made her even more looks-obsessed (if she couldn’t have a baby, then damn it, she’d be the hottest housewife on the block!), though she’d toned it down a bit since becoming a mother to the two little girls she’d adopted with her second husband.

Angie’s parents set an even worse example. They no longer had sex, according to her mother. Worse, her mom didn’t seem bothered by the fact. Angie wondered if she herself would feel that way after forty years of sleeping next to the same man every night. In her mom’s case, one who rattled the whole house when he snored, farted openly, and had more hair on his back than a mountain gorilla. Did familiarity breed, if not contempt (her parents were devoted to each other if not still madly in love), then an inferior-grade contentment? If so, she’d rather live alone the rest of her life, thank you very much.

No, she had no regrets. She had a career she loved, a family she was close to (if at times those bonds chafed), and good friends. She would have liked to have had children of her own but took joy in spending time with her nieces and nephews and the kids in her cooking class at the Bedford-Stuyvesant Youth Center—Raul, Julio, Jermaine, Tre’Shawn and Daarel, Tamika, D’Enice, and Chandra—where she volunteered one night a week. What more did she need?

At the Harte to Heart meet-and-greets, she was content to be a fly on the wall. As she put out platters or circulated with trays she could watch the mating dance from a safe remove: the women being hit on by guys in whom she could tell they had zero interest, from the bored looks they wore, and the men who surreptitiously scoped out the competition while chatting up a sure bet. She took note of which guests went home alone at the end of the evening and which ones hooked up. She silently cheered when sparks flew and sometimes had to bite her tongue when she overheard a guy deliver some lame pickup line. “Dude, you’re never going to get laid that way!” she’d come close to blurting on more than one occasion.