The Wife of Reilly (21 page)

“Those days were fun,” I smiled, remembering. “Hey, do you want to go to the newsstand and buy papers from around the country like we used to? God, remember those awful op-eds in the
Dallas Fort Worth Star
?”

“Yes,” Reilly said. “What was that guy’s name? That gun nut, right?”

“Yes, that’s the one.”

Reilly stepped into the shower, and for a moment I forgot that I’d fallen out of love with him.

Since I’d planned to spend the entire day with Reilly, I knew I had only one chance to call Matt.
Ring.
“Pick up, pick up,” I urged.
Ring.
“Pick up the phone.”
Ring.
“Pick it up already!”
Ring.
“Come on, I can’t —”

“Hello,” Matt answered groggily.

“Are you still in bed?” I asked, my entire being illuminating as I heard his voice answer the phone.

“Hey,” he said. “How’s it going?”

“Rough night?” I laughed.

“Yeah,” he stretched. “Listen, can I call you back later?”

“Of course,” I told him. “Oh shit, no. I’m going to be out all day.”

“I talked to you the other day while you were at your dry cleaner. Cell phone,” he reminded me.

Think, think.
“I am going to a Dixie jazz band today and I won’t hear the phone. We’ll just talk tomorrow.”

“What time is the concert over?” he asked. “Just call me when you’re done with that.”

“Well, after that, Jennifer and I are going to an, um, amusement park. Great Adventure. That’s actually where the Dixie jazz band is playing, but then we’re going to spend the rest of the day there. It’s a work thing, you know? I’ve got to act like I’m totally into the whole adventure thing or my client will be insulted. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay.” I could see Matt shrug his shoulders. “Whatever.”

Whatever?
That verbal blast from the past was like someone tossed a medicine ball through a cannon and hit the bull’s eye of my gut. “Hey, I love you,” I said. “Only forty-two more days and we’ll be together.”

There was a momentary silence before Matt responded to me. “Yeah, that’ll be great.”

“So what are your big, wild plans for me when I get there?”

“What?”

“Your friend last night said you had all kinds of wild plans for me when I got there.”

“Oh that,” Matt said. “We’re just going skiing, that’s all. Listen, can we talk about that later? Someone’s knocking on my door right now.”

“Love you.”

“Same here,” Matt said.

I heard Reilly’s shower turning off, and the stillness that was surely his toweling himself dry. Scrub, scrub, scrub. Spit. Stream of water. Gargle. Spit. Repeat. Then came the humming, which meant Reilly was rolling deodorant on his armpits.

“I’m not going to shave today,” Reilly shouted from the bathroom. “That okay with you?”

I’m leaving you for another man soon. Is that okay with you?
I shouted back silently. “Sure,” I returned instead. “Whatever.”

Skirted in a thick white towel, Reilly reached into our menu drawer and began dialing the phone. “Yes, I’d like an order for delivery, please,” Reilly said to the person on the phone. “One order of pot stickers, vegetable chow fun, moo shoo pork and sesame puffs.” He paused. “Cash.” Again he paused before giving our address. “Oh, I don’t know, I’ve never tried your Peking duck.” Reilly listened. “Yes, that’s the right address. No, you must have me confused with another customer, there’s no Matt living here.”

My head whipped around, and my lower intestine jumped into my throat like the spring of a jack-in-the-box.

“No, I’m certain I’ve never tried your Peking duck,” Reilly said.

* * *

When Lin arrived, Reilly met him at the door and exchanged forty dollars for the brown bags of Chinese food. Lin peeked his head in the door and scanned the loft. Then he caught a glance of me. He lowered his head and went down the stairs looking betrayed.

You’re just the delivery boy, Lin. Don’t take it so hard!

Chapter 18

On the afternoon that Reilly left for Berlin, a thick blanket of snow covered New York. By five o’clock, it was a blizzard outside, with thick pellets of ice whipping pedestrians and wind mercilessly snapping umbrellas inside out. Still, the gallery was filled to capacity with single women, and a line was forming outside.

Each guest was greeted by the flash bulb of a Polaroid camera. Jennifer hired three women from a temp agency to staff the event. “Smile,” ordered the temp. Another staffer then jotted the women’s names in Sharpie pen at the foot of the photo and pinned it to the right side of their tops or jackets. A third temp handed each woman a pen and clipboard with an application to fill out.

“What the hell is all of this?” I asked Jennifer.

“We’ve got to keep track of all the applicants,” she said. “Look at this turnout!”

Applicants?

There were more than a hundred women milling around the gallery reading the captions beside the enlarged mounted photos of Reilly. Another forty or so stood patiently in the blizzard waiting their turn.

Jennifer announced that the women had thirty minutes before we had to boot them out for the second seating.

“What did you say in your ad?” I asked.

“You know, marriage-minded attractive international businessman soon-to-be divorced. Six-figure income. Caring, kind and wounded, blah blah blah. Just the facts. Here, let me take you around and show you how it works.”

Wounded? Did she really think Reilly was wounded?

“Do you think I’ve wounded Reilly?” The words fought their way out from my crowded throat. “You do, don’t you? Oh my God, you’re right. You’ve all been telling me this from the start, but I refused to listen. I was so convinced that it was a brilliant plan that I didn’t even consider the irreparable damage I’m going to do to this man. He’s going to be in therapy for years, this is going to fuck him up so badly. Yasmine was right, he’s going to be damaged goods when he finds out about this. Shit, no one’s going to want him. Holy shit. Get these women out of here! Call this off right now.” I turned and shouted, “Go home, everyone. The party’s —”

Jennifer snapped me back to face her with one word and a firm hand on my shoulder.

“Hey!” barked Jennifer. “Hey,” she said, much kinder this time. “Calm down. No one thinks you’re damaging Reilly. Wounded was Sophie’s idea. She said women love a project, and if Reilly sounds like he was a bit of a fixer emotionally, like he’s got some mild intimacy disorder or something, we thought it would add a little something to his new single persona.”

Now he needs a persona?

“Let’s try this again,” Jennifer said, turning me toward an enormous photo of Reilly as a newborn. “Here’s where we start.” The gallery lights were positioned perfectly above each of the sixteen larger-than-life mounted photographs.

In bold print a sign next to the photo read,
Reilly was born July 14, 1963, to Fred and Millicent Sheehan at Allegheny General Hospital. Reilly soon returned to his family home in Moon Township to meet big brothers Philip and Brian.

The Life of Reilly Tour, as Jennifer called it, circled the gallery chronologically with photos of his life.

“Oh look,” I sighed. “Here’s our graduation from Wharton. Wait a minute. I was in this photo. What happened to me?”

“Photoshop. Sorry.” She continued. “Now, notice how Sophie, Chad and Daniel are strategically positioned at their stations? They’ve got two jobs. Talk up Reilly. Weed out bores.” Chad gave me a purposefully frightened smile and mouthed something I could not make out. I walked over to him to ask what he was saying.

“I said this is sick,” he laughed. Jennifer refilled his wine glass.

“Good God, Jennifer, what the hell are these?!” I gasped upon seeing Reilly’s face printed on white chocolate hearts. Beside the silver tray, there was a small white card with calligraphy writing.

Have a Reilly. He’s delicious,
the card invited.

“I’m not sure about this Reilly guy. Do I still get the mug?” one of the women asked Jennifer.

“Of course,” she replied, walking her over to a huge pyramid of mugs with Reilly’s face imprinted on them. I later found out that these were promised to the first hundred women to arrive.

“Commemorative mugs?!” I shouted. “You’re offering commemorative mugs?!”

“Calm down,” Jennifer whispered. “We can’t send them home empty-handed. Only one is going to get the husband. Let them have a mug at least.”

Why wasn’t that woman sure about Reilly, anyway?

At the very end of the exhibit stood a life-sized cutout of Reilly bent on one knee holding a bouquet of flowers in one hand and a ring box in the other.

The text
Won’t you be the Wife of Reilly?
swept across his cardboard body like a breeze. Jennifer borrowed this technique from the folks at another agency that makes movie posters. She used an
Indiana Jones
font so the display had a very adventurous feel to it.

“He’s cute,” I heard one chic looking woman say about Reilly.

“He must be a very successful businessman if he can hire this PR machine to put together a shindig like this to find a wife,” commented a young woman in professional clothes.

“Hear that?” Jennifer beamed with pride. “A PR
machine
.”

By seven we were entertaining our fourth shift of guests and running dangerously low on hors d’oeuvres. By the looks of the growing line outside the gallery door, we’d soon run out of food and wine.

“I can make a quick run to Dean and Delucca,” offered Daniel.

Jennifer handed him three hundred dollar bills. “Pish posh,” Daniel scoffed. “What am I, holding a cardboard sign? Keep your spare change, sister.”

Daniel walked out of the gallery and immediately turned back. “Houston, we have a big fucking problem,” he said.

“Back so soon?” Sophie asked.

“In about thirty seconds, Reilly’s going to come walking through that door.”

“Nonsense,” I assured. “He’s in Germa — Reilly!”

Think fast. Why are all these women here? It’s a NOW meeting? Post
Vagina Monologues
discussion group? Book club?

“Hey Prudence, my plane couldn’t take off because of the weather,” Reilly said. “What the heck is —” He stopped dead in his tracks upon seeing the giant photos of himself on display. Then the mugs. He squinted to figure out if it was actually his face on the chocolate hearts. All of the expression flushed from his face when he saw a chubby brunette posing for a picture with the two-dimensional version of Reilly.

“Reilly, let me explain,” I began.

“I think that would be a very good idea, Prudence,” he said sternly.

Before I could begin, one of the women shrieked, “It’s him. It’s Reilly.” You’d think he was a rock star the way these women converged on him. “Reilly, I’m Ann Marie Flannegan. I’m Irish too. I think you’re just terrific and I just know we could be very happy together.”

Reilly stared blankly.

“And your sister Prudence is just wonderful the way she and her friends are knocking themselves out to find you a new wife after that bitch left you,” she continued.

He looked around at Chad. Then Daniel. Then Jennifer. And Sophie, who couldn’t help waving and sheepishly smiling.

“Prudence, I think we’d better talk about this upstairs,” Reilly said.

“Don’t go, Reilly!” another woman cried.

“Yeah, stay a while. We hardly know you,” another agreed.

When we went upstairs, Reilly sat on the couch as I explained the events of the last ten weeks. I tried to give him the bare-bones version, leaving out the torn underwear, the ring from Tiffany and, of course, the highly exaggerated rumors of his death.

He just nodded his head and laughed.

Good, this is good. He has a sense of humor about it.

“Are you out of your mind, Prudence?” he shouted.

What happened to the laughing?

“What kind of screwed-up control freak are you, anyway?” he asked.

“It’s not like that, Reilly. I was trying to do the right thing for you.”

“You were trying to do right by me?”

Yes, that’s right. Now that that’s all cleared up, let’s go downstairs and meet some women, shall we?

“You weren’t trying to do right by me. You were trying to do right by yourself,” he shouted. “You didn’t want to feel guilty so you thought you’d replace yourself. What nerve you have. You can’t just divorce me like a normal wife, you have to be the one who decides who my new wife is too? Prudence, you are a fucking lunatic and a control freak. This is not normal behavior. Normal people don’t do this. If I want a new wife, I can find one without your help, thank you very much!”

“I was trying to do something nice for you, Reilly. I didn’t want to just leave you high and dry. Why can’t you see this for what it is? A gift.”

“A gift?!” he repeated several times. “You are deluded if you think you were giving me a gift. You are playing a game with my life, and you’re the only one who gets to make the moves. Hell, you’re the only one who even knows there’s a game going on!”

Reilly paced across the floor breathing heavily. “When did this happen? I didn’t even know you were unhappy in the marriage. You told me everything was fine. Why did I have a vasectomy six months ago if you were going to leave me?!” he shot rapid fire. “How many of these parties have you had? How many women in this city have my goddamn face on a mug?”

“This is the first,” I told him.

“Prudence, you’ll have to forgive me for not believing a single word out of your mouth. I’ve got to get out of here,” he said, walking toward the bedroom to pack his suitcases.

“Where are you going?”

“To a hotel. Then to Berlin. Then I’m going to look for an apartment until we can sort out our affairs and go our separate ways.”

“That’s it?” I asked. “You don’t even want to try to work things out. You’re just walking away from our marriage like I mean nothing to you?”

“Prudence,” Reilly shouted. “You’re in love with another man whom you agreed to marry. Am I going to walk away from you? You bet your ass I am! I’m going to run away from you as fast as I can and wash my hands of you.”