His Other Wife (13 page)

H
ilary sat halfway hunched in her chair in the dirty basement, staring at the toes of her shoes. If she stared at her shoes,
she didn’t have to see anything else. She didn’t have to see the rows of
WANTED
posters. She didn’t have to listen to the door that buzzed open and then latched shut with a sharp click. She didn’t have
to notice the phone ringing for hours because no one would answer. She didn’t have to see the heavy traffic of detainees moving
in and out of the door, their faces lined no matter how young they were, their eyes empty.

She didn’t glance up until her ex-husband walked in the door. When he entered, she unfolded from her chair and stood. He stopped
in front of her. “Hello, Eric.” She saw his Adam’s apple slide up, then down as he swallowed.

It seemed there was no proper way to greet each other now that his new wife wasn’t there, now that Hilary had told him she
needed him, now that their son was in trouble. She didn’t open her arms. He didn’t offer to hold her. They waited, only a
breath’s distance from each other, while each of them thought about the painful moments that had passed between them, none
of them as painful as this one.

The jail had a reputation as one of the largest city jails in the country. As far as size as well as other things went, the
Sun-Times
likened it to a prison. It was overcrowded; there could be thousands of inmates on any one day. Who knew what sort of people
Seth would be with in a holding cell? Murderers and armed robbers. Thugs of the worst kind. It hadn’t taken Hilary long to
understand that criminal charges were different from anything they’d ever experienced before.

“I called John Mulligan,” she said.

“Is he on his way?”

“He’s already been in to see Seth. He was here before I arrived.”

The lawyer had been fast to take down the pertinent details — everything the officer had told her when he called, everything
else she’d been able to glean about the accident from what Gina had told her, everything she’d seen at the hospital.

“Are there going to be charges against him?”

“I don’t know. I just…wanted someone to be with Seth. I didn’t want him to be alone.”

Then Eric asked, “You called him before you called me, didn’t you?”

“Well, you know. There are some people you can just
trust
.” Hilary could have pinched herself for saying the words. It sounded awful the way they came out.

During the horrible months when Eric and Hilary had been trying to keep their heads about their broken relationship, trying
to come to some amicable means of dividing their property and their child and the wrenches in the garage and Gran’s Christmas
china, John Mulligan had seen the wounds of the war. He knew the worst in each of them, how helpless Hilary had been, how
brutal and condemning she and Eric had been to each other. John had been instrumental in working out the initial court agreement
to trade Seth back and forth according to a set schedule. And when Eric had married Pam and moved to California, he had forfeited
that. Although it had disrupted Seth’s two-a-days in the summer and his coaches had acted like Hilary had encouraged their
star player to hold out on an NFL contract and robbed them of a team, Hilary made sure Seth made a trip to see Eric. And Seth
had always been happy to visit his dad.

“I’m glad you called John. If we need him, he’ll do a good job.”

“I didn’t know how you would feel about it. He was the only one I knew.”

Eric nodded toward the cell phone she hadn’t realized she still gripped in her hand. “He’ll let us know what’s going on?”

Hilary nodded.

“You know we were planning on leaving tomorrow. But maybe I shouldn’t go back right now,” Eric said. “Pam and the kids could
go back, but I — I’ve got personal days coming at the office. I could use them to spend some time with Seth. I don’t want
to leave the two of you alone while you go through this.”

Somewhere in the background, a buzzer sounded, the sound of a clanging gate. “I know what you want to say,” he admitted when
she stayed silent. “I know, and I deserve it. If I wanted to be there for Seth, I should have thought about it long ago.”

Hilary glanced up and touched Eric’s arm. She saw motion at the far end of the corridor. For a moment, she couldn’t make out
faces. All she could see was a battalion of uniforms, an entire battery of badges and sidearms and broad-chested men. They
looked as grim as if they were escorting some notorious war criminal to the gallows. Then, as the group moved toward the security
doors and the warden, who was sitting behind a tall spare desk, buzzed the doors open, an officer stepped aside and Hilary
saw Seth.

Bloody scratches crosshatched one side of his jaw. A bruise bloomed on his chin. He looked so small and pale and disheveled
that Hilary almost didn’t recognize him. When had she started thinking that this boy was a grown man?

The escorting officers left Seth at the desk to be processed out. “You his parents?” the guard asked. “Which one of you is
going to sign the release papers?”

They sprang from their seats. “Only need one of you.” The guard opened a box that one of the officers had given him. Hilary
walked forward and picked up the pen, which was attached to the desk with a beaded chain. Guess in this place you
really
had to worry about people stealing the pen. The guard marked where she needed to sign with a series of
x
’s. Hilary sifted through the wrinkled pages and scribbled her name.

Each of Seth’s belongings had been identified with a yellow hangtag, and one by one the warden removed the tags and handed
them over. Seth’s smartphone. (Hilary had tried to call him. Had it been ringing and ringing in this box?) His wallet. The
watch she had given him for graduation. A pack of Wrigley’s spearmint. A handful of change.

Hilary was thinking,
What would it be like to be locked away for seventy years and, upon your departure, have the exact coins handed back to you?
The ones that had been in your pocket a lifetime ago? The ones that had been there when you’d been a different person? The
coins would be the same, but you wouldn’t be.

Seth sorted through his items and didn’t pocket them right away. He picked up his smartphone and examined it as if it didn’t
belong to him anymore. He had to have dozens of messages. Hilary alone had left three of them.

Oh, Lord
, she prayed.
What can I do to help my son?

Seth picked up his wallet and thumbed through to make sure everything was there. Hilary could see that his thumb had been
inked; they’d taken a mug shot and his fingerprints. Seth glanced over, saw his waiting father, and his face slammed shut.

Eric looked at Hilary.
I’ll meet you at the house
, his eyes told her.

Hilary returned to the chairs where they’d been waiting, clutching her keys and her handbag. Her stomach was roiling.
Don’t let him chase you away
, she wanted to say.
No matter
how he acts, he doesn’t want you to leave him.
Then, because they had nothing else left besides solidarity, she gripped Eric’s hand.

D
on’t you have Kleenex? A napkin?
Anything?
” Seth rifled through the glove compartment, shoving aside the insurance papers. “Does this ink come off ? I’ve got to get
this ink off my fingers.” He dug out a wrinkled napkin and scrubbed his hands hard enough to take the skin off. Still the
stain, the dark blotches etching the whorls and loops of his fingertips, remained.

His head hit the headrest again.

“Seth,” his mother said.

“Laura’s really messed up.”

“Honey.”

“It should have been me.”

“No.”

“I should be unconscious at that hospital.”

“It was an accident. A freak accident, Seth. You couldn’t have known.”

“Yeah. Right. It would have happened anyway. She would have climbed that bluff by herself, even if I hadn’t talked her into
it. Even if I hadn’t promised her that I wouldn’t let anything happen to her.” He slammed the dashboard with his fist.
“Stupid.”

“Seth. Don’t.”

“Mom. I can’t do anything right. Not anymore.” He couldn’t look at his mom. He didn’t want to talk about it anymore. His anger
and guilt felt strangely satisfying. All those years of living up to their expectations. All those years of being the “good
boy.” He felt like an animal inside him had been sprung free. He didn’t have to pretend.

When they arrived home, Hilary elbowed her way in from the garage door. “Are you up, Mother? Where are you?” But she already
knew the answer. The smell of strong coffee drifted from the kitchen.

“She’s up,” Pam said as Alva lifted a cup to her lips and slurped. “I phoned her.” Pam stood in the kitchen with Hilary’s
cheese grater in one hand and a hunk of Monterey Jack in the other. “I thought she needed to know what was happening.”

It was true, then. There was no magic time-out when your life started falling apart. Things didn’t stop to let you grieve
or let you blame yourself or let you pull yourself together. The realities kept shooting their relentless darts, the dishwasher
that needed to be emptied, the bills that were overdue, the woman whom your husband had fallen for when he’d gotten tired
of you. Pam seized the wooden spoon, tucked the bowl inside the crook of her arm, and whipped the eggs into a small cyclone.

When Seth walked in the room and saw Pam, his jaw clamped so tight he looked like he might break a tooth. He didn’t ask the
question, but everyone in the room could tell what he was thinking.

What’s she doing here?

“Seth. Honey.” Hilary reached for him.

“I’m going to my room,” he announced.

At that moment, Pam seemed not to notice Seth’s reaction at all. “In case you don’t remember, we suggested you not let him
go camping, Hilary.” Pam’s every accusation played in rhythm to the thumping spoon.

“
Seth
is a responsible adult.” But, for the first time, Hilary wondered if she might be lying, to Seth, to herself. The video
rewound in her head, the one of Seth being escorted toward her by the officers, the moment they’d stepped aside to reveal,
not the young man she’d expected, but the broken, hurt little boy.

“This day would have been completely different if you had let him go with us last night.”

“How did you get here, Pam? Taxi? Bus? Did my mother come to pick you up? What?”

Pam used the fork to stab a pat of butter and ring it around the pan. “That’s just the problem. He
is
classified as an adult. An eighteen-year-old. The timing couldn’t be worse for a kid getting in trouble with the law.”

“This isn’t the time.”

“It never is.” The butter sizzled and spattered as Pam poured egg into the pan.

“She took a taxi.” Alva set her cup down hard in the saucer. “I wouldn’t have gone to pick her up. Not this morning. Not like
this.”

Where had Eric gone? Hilary could hear the rhythmic
ping ping ping
of a basketball bouncing on pavement and she realized he must have gone to the side yard to keep the kids distracted.

Hilary remembered Gina saying what seemed a lifetime ago that Hilary needed to show Pam who was ahead in the cooking department.
She grabbed a tomato, pierced its skin with a knife, and watched it hemorrhage onto the counter. “If we have anything to discuss
at all, it’s how to best support Seth after what’s happened.” Pam didn’t step aside. Hilary reached across her to get the
cutting board. “You have no idea how badly he’s hurting.” Hilary hewed the tomato into pieces, added basil.

“You see I was right about the party,” Pam commented with false lightness. “You could have stopped this from happening. But
you didn’t.”

Hilary sliced her finger. Blood oozed from the cut, mixed with the tomato.

“Seth is a part of our family, too,” Pam said, and Hilary felt like the knife that had just cut her finger had also twisted
in her heart.

Pam’s accusations hit far too close to her own deep fear.
I was supposed to protect him. He was never supposed to know how it felt for his world to collapse.
Hilary stared at her gushing finger, her voice skating on the edge of panic. “You don’t think this could have anything to
do with you, too? You don’t think this could have something to do with
all
of us?”

Eric wandered through the side door, herding the children. Pam snagged his attention. “Can you get them to wash their hands?
It’s time to eat.” Eric tapped them on the bottom and they bounded away.

Hilary had no idea if Seth could overhear this conversation and, honestly, she didn’t care. “I met Seth’s English teacher
at the florist shop the other day. Seth was supposed to write an essay about graduation and how his family was going to celebrate
it.”

“So,” Pam asked, “did he write about the party that you told him he could go to?”

Eric was turning toward Pam, but Hilary made him stop. “No, Eric,” she said. “You need to hear this, too.”

“Did he write about us coming to visit?” Eric asked.

Hilary spared no details as she recounted the story of running into Seth’s teacher at the flower shop. Seth’s wishful thinking,
unspoken. And even though she had never read the essay, she knew her son well enough! She knew how Seth would have described
it. Eric and Hilary beneath sun so clear and sparkling that it burned through their resolve. A family float trip as if the
divorce had never happened, the rapids boiling, the raft angling over river-slick boulders, fishermen’s lines arcing in the
breeze. “He’s eighteen years old. And he made up a story that was pure fiction.
”

“Well,” Eric said. “As long as he told them he’d made it up.”

“He didn’t, Eric. His teacher spoke to me after she’d read it. She complimented us for sacrificing for Seth’s sake, for how
well we parent together.”

This made the second time I didn’t know how to protect Seth from getting ripped to pieces.

“Seth doesn’t like me,” Pam started up again. “You should have seen his face when he walked in and saw me here.”

To Eric’s credit, he didn’t tell her she was wrong. “Do you blame him? He can’t help what he’s feeling, Pam. Give him some
time.”

“He’s had five years.”

“And he’s just made one of the worst mistakes he’ll ever make in his life.” Hilary recognized Eric’s tone of voice, the same
combination of anger and withdrawal that had made their divorce so difficult. He’d reached maximum input. In man terms, the
War General had just sounded a massive retreat. “This isn’t the time or place. I want you to just drop it.”

At that Hilary expected Pam to explode. Only she didn’t get the chance because Ben came out of the bathroom. “Mom, why won’t
Seth play with me today?” Then, “Mom? What’s wrong?”

“Go find your sister,” Pam said.

Eric and Pam went for a walk by the lakeshore that afternoon. They left their shoes on the boardwalk before they got to the
sand. Ben and Lily skipped along in front of them. Lily was carefully picking up stones. Ben was being all boy, finding ropes
of kelp that had washed ashore, saying it was a slimy green monster, and chasing Lily around with it.

“Ben!” Pam called to him. “Stop torturing your sister.”

Pam and Eric watched for a while as the children ran zigzags in the sand, racing on sandpiper legs. Eric touched Pam’s arm.
“I have an important question to ask you.”

“What?”

“Do you mind if I change my plane ticket and stay a little longer? I think it’s important that I spend time with my son.”

Pam strolled at his side, her toes digging in the sand. “I think we need to do whatever is right for him.”

“You could take the kids back.” Eric bent to pick up a flat stone. He sidearmed it and it skipped twice before sinking into
the water. “Get them home and get them into their normal routine again.”

Pam froze where she stood, her eyes troubled. “You don’t want us to stay with you, Eric?”

He stopped, too. “You? Stay? Even the kids?”

“Yes.”

“You would do that?”

“Of course I would. You know I care about Seth. He’s your son. That makes him important to me, too.”

“Pam, I know your heart. I know what you’re thinking. But maybe it isn’t the best idea.”

“What do you mean, Eric? Don’t you want me here?”

“It’s the money issue. There’s your job. And if you and the kids stay, we have to pay for the hotel another week.”

“You could stay with your mom and dad,” she suggested. “I guess you could do that if we didn’t stay.”

“Or I could even stay with Hilary.”

Maybe it was the wrong thing to say. “Are you staying to help
Seth
through all of this, Eric? Or do you think it’s Hilary who needs support?”

“I don’t understand what you’re so afraid of. What have I done to make you feel like this? Like you’re trying to get the upper
hand in some competition that doesn’t exist?”

Pam had no answer for him. It was almost like she didn’t hear. “What if Seth’s done this to try to get you away from me? You
heard what Hilary said about the paper he wrote. What if this is some trick he’s pulling to get the two of you back together?”

“Are you kidding me?” Anger sharpened Eric’s voice. “Why would you ask a question like that?” The waves of the lake slid up,
curled onto themselves, and slipped back. “Trust me, Pam. Everything in life isn’t about you. I know my son. He wouldn’t pull
something like this because of you. He wouldn’t consciously hurt
anyone
. Not for
any
reason.”

“We’re your family,” Pam said. “We want to stay with you. If it means another week at the hotel, so be it.” But like sand
that moves with the curve of the tide, something had slipped apart between them. The waves at their feet seemed to be asking
questions, too.