His Other Wife (18 page)

Overhead, the full moon was obliterated by the mammoth shadow the Earth was casting. They were in the middle of a lunar eclipse.
When Hilary had discovered it outside her bedroom window minutes ago, it had only been beginning. Which meant that no matter
how fast the universe was moving, they’d been given plenty of time.

Seth and Hilary caught the eclipse at the moment the two orbs merged in perfect alignment. The sky became darker; the stars
throbbed so full of light that they seemed to vibrate. Fleeting, threadbare clouds reflected a soft wash of illumination from
the land below, nothing from above. The faint halo around the moon, all that was visible of the astronomical body that circled
the Earth, was a thin ice-blue outline.

“If you hadn’t come to get me, I would have missed this,” Seth said.

Hilary gave a sad laugh. “I guess it’s good I couldn’t sleep. It was so dark that I got up and looked outside. It was an accident
that I found it.”

Seth searched his mother’s face in the pale light. “Accidents. Is there really such a thing as accidents?”

Even here, even tonight, with the heavens cavorting overhead as if only for them, they couldn’t escape what had happened at
the campsite. “Why don’t you think about that?” Hilary asked her son. “Why don’t you tell me?”

Seth turned back to the sky. A pale rim of light was beginning to appear, glowing like a big cosmic fingernail. He watched
it grow larger before he draped his arm around Hilary’s shoulder and pulled her close. The moon was half-visible by then.
She waited for what he would say, holding her breath as the light swelled in the sky, as they began to cast shadows.

“I love you, Mom.”

After everything, why was it that which finally made her cry?

W
hen the telephone rang, Seth had gone with Emily to the bank to deposit the money gifts they’d gotten for graduation. Hilary
tucked the receiver under her chin. “Hello?”

The man introduced himself as a representative of the Stuart Foundation. It took a beat, two beats, to understand the significance
of this call. The Stuart Foundation was the community group that had interviewed Seth and awarded him his largest scholarship
to Emhurst.

Hilary’s stomach plummeted when she finally recognized the name. “Seth’s gone out for a little while,” she said, trying to
keep her voice even. “I’m sure you’re calling to talk to him.”

“Under the circumstances we think it would be best, Ms. Myers, if I had this conversation with you.”

“We?” Hilary didn’t know about the “we” he was referring to.

“The board of directors,” he explained. “The community group that awarded Seth their annual scholarship. They thought it would
be best if I spoke for all of them.”

The whole time he talked, Hilary’s ears rang. She heard parts of his speech, only parts, and it seemed like he didn’t once
stop the explanation to allow her to reply. “In view of the circumstances…doesn’t measure up to the board’s expectations…someone
who we feel might better represent our mission.”

When Hilary had been a little girl growing up in Indiana, one of the Myerses’ neighbors had cut a maze in his cornfield. He
took such pride in letting the local kids go out and pretend to get lost. Hilary used to spend hours shrieking and running
and trying to find her way out of Pete Walker’s field. But once, she couldn’t remember how old she’d been, she got turned
around. No matter how hard she searched, she couldn’t find a way out.

She could hear her friends’ voices, but she didn’t know how to get to them. When they laughed, she knew they were laughing
at her. Everywhere she turned, she’d run into another dead end. Even now, she couldn’t have told you which was worse, her
arms’ itching like fire from the cornstalks or the fear she couldn’t find her way out.

As the man’s voice droned on, Hilary was lost in that field again. She was making her way through an emotional maze, every
blind corner leading her to a passage that stopped and went nowhere. Only it was worse because she wasn’t searching for a
way out for herself but for her son.

She should have listened to Pam and Eric. She should have been strict with Seth; she should have stopped him from going to
the party.
How could I have let him get harmed this way? How could I have let it happen?
Added to that, she felt a cold fury at anyone who tried to touch them, anyone who threatened to take anything else away.
She heard this gentleman saying words like “in light of what happened,” “while we certainly
support
Seth,” and “the decision wasn’t unanimous.” All the time he was speaking, Hilary was thinking,
How can I tell Seth?

Even before she hung up the telephone, she knew Pam was standing right behind her. Hilary stared at the wall, unwilling to
turn around.

“He’s lost his scholarship, hasn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve always known something like this was going to happen.”

“Pam,” Hilary begged her, “please don’t make something of this. It just hurts too much.
Please
don’t talk to me right now.”

“You don’t need to worry. He’ll still go to college, Hilary. Eric and I have set money aside for Seth.”

Hold my tongue, Father. Don’t let me speak. Don’t let me make things worse than they already are.

The only thing she could choke out was this: “Eric never told me anything about that.”

“Well, it was my idea from the beginning,” Pam said.

“What?”

“You shouldn’t be upset. Together we can take care of this. Eric and I are capable of paying Seth’s college tuition. We’ve
already talked about this.”

But this wasn’t just about
Hilary
anymore. She was devastated for Seth. Each disappointment seemed worse than the last. Yes, he’d made a terrible choice. Yes,
it had ended in a deplorable accident that could have been avoided. This was the most difficult of everything for her, standing
by and watching the blows begin to pound away at him in succession.

“But you don’t understand.” This time, when she tried to explain it to Pam, she honestly felt like her heart was breaking.
“We’ve done everything
right
. Seth
earned
that scholarship.”

“We want to help, Hilary.”

“It was something he could be proud of. Heaven knows he needs something to be proud of right now.”

Pam was holding one of Ben’s shirts. It looked so perfect and small dangling between her hands. Hilary remembered when Seth
had worn shirts like that, when she could dress him exactly the way she wanted. She’d have to catch him in the crook of her
arm as he ran past; she’d have to make him stand still at the sink. She thought of brandishing the comb, the sweat-sweet smell
as she wet his hair, the tiny, perfect line of scalp she could see. Pam still got to do those things. She still had time left
with her children.
Is that why this is so hard, Lord? Am I the one who’s jealous?
Hilary was suddenly so jealous of Pam holding that little shirt, suddenly so jealous that she had all this time left with
her children. It was a fierce, ugly sensation. Hilary couldn’t escape it.

But that wasn’t what Pam had been saying, was it? Wasn’t she only saying that she and Eric were offering to help? That they’d
talked about it?

In the keepsake box under Hilary’s bed she kept Seth’s precious Christmas ornaments he’d made in Sunday school. An old video
of Seth performing a song in elementary choir. The letters he’d sent home from camp. She could prove she’d been a dedicated,
involved mom when Seth had been in elementary school. But Hilary’s pain kept urging her to throw punches. “You think you know
so much, Pam, but you haven’t even been initiated yet. You have no idea what it’s like raising a teenager.”

That one quiet truth broke through her anger, reminded Hilary that the words Pam needed to hear were the very ones she needed
to take to heart herself. Seth was older now and she was parenting him differently than she’d parented him before. And that
was okay.

“Please.” This was the only thing Hilary knew to do. She could only beg Pam not to make it so hard on both of them. “Don’t
provoke me anymore. Please. It’s too rough on both of us.”

At last Hilary was able to sort through the whirlwind of conflict within her. On the inside, she was a roaring tigress, claiming
her own territory. On the outside, her words were measured, as level and strong as the Michigan Avenue Bridge.

“Pam, you are welcome to visit us here. I know that Eric needs his family. But you aren’t welcome here if you’re going to
treat me like this.”

Pam took one look at Hilary’s face and knew she meant it. “I don’t want any of this to hurt Eric. You know how much I love
Eric, Hilary.”

“Of course,” Hilary said. “I do.”

The only things Pam had ever gotten for herself she’d gotten by outperforming others. Playing hardball, her father used to
call it as the five sisters sat around the supper table and he quizzed them about their extra-credit projects, their advancing
to first chair in orchestra, their extra visits to the small private colleges up and down the California coast when it came
time to be interviewed for scholarships.

Hardball is for making candy
, Pam’s mom had always reminded him,
not for making girls.

But no matter how her mother put it, Pam had grown up in a family seething with competition. The first girl to the bathroom
had long enough to complete her beauty routine; the others didn’t. The first ones to the breakfast table got the fruit left
in the bowl and the milk in the pitcher; the others didn’t. The first girl asked to a dance was allowed to shop for a new
dress; the others had to borrow from friends or find something in the “dress closet,” where most things already had sleeves
removed or waists altered or their hems cut off.

Pam only half-jokingly had told Eric how growing up in that house had been like playing musical chairs all the time. There
had always been one less chair to sit in than the number of people who needed one.

If she had to put her finger on it, she’d tell you that she’d disappointed her father the most when she’d decided against
law school. He’d been furious that she would turn it down after she’d worked so hard for the opportunity.
Interior design?
he’d scoffed.
How are you going to change the world working in interior design
? Pam had two sisters who’d become doctors, one who’d become a lawyer, another who’d moved with her husband to northern Virginia
because they both commuted to Washington, D.C., every day and worked in some capacity at the Pentagon.

Pam’s first marriage had been to a man her father had wanted her to marry. A man who’d spent years in law school and was working
in environmental law in San Diego.
If you didn’t make it yourself
, Harvey Kloister had whispered in his daughter’s ear as he’d escorted her up the aisle, with the church full of the social
select of Southern California, the Reagans included,
at least you’ve latched on to someone who did.

But the problem with her husband, she soon discovered, was that he didn’t rely on his valuable law education when it came
to his family. He liked to hit. She’d planned on leaving; she had money socked away in a ziplock bag in the bottom drawer
of the freezer beneath the bag of tropical fruit she used to make smoothies. She’d stay until she figured out how to make
her father accept the inevitable. But then her husband had gone after Ben.

Ben had been so little, his tiny legs as spindly as willow twigs, when he’d dragged over a bucket in the garage and climbed
up to reach a tray of nails. Pam had been in her home office, using a gigantic square of grid paper to piece together a conference
room for a client, when she’d heard the commotion: The raindrop patter of a thousand pieces falling. Ben’s wail. The roar
of a grown man’s anger.

She’d raced to the garage to find Ben crouched on the cement floor, nails pressed into his knees. “He’s staying there until
he picks up every last one of those,” her husband bellowed as he’d tugged his belt through its loops again. “That’ll teach
him to bother my belongings.”

Pam had shrieked, “But he’s
three
!” Only it hadn’t mattered whether he was three or thirteen or thirty. No human was going to treat her child that way.

She marched straight to the kitchen, found the ziplock in the freezer, that contained emergency cash, shouldered her Dolce
& Gabbana purse, and marched out to grab her child. She picked nails out where they’d been embedded so deep that they made
purple
t
’s in his skin. “We aren’t going to do this anymore,” she’d said. With quaking hands, she’d latched Ben into his car seat.
She’d driven ten blocks, terrified she was being followed. And when she’d finally pulled over in a neighborhood miles from
her own, she’d thrown on the parking brake and run to the backseat to gather her son against her. She’d kissed the welts on
his calves. She’d nuzzled him, stroked his back. “Mama’s here,” she’d said over and over again. “Mama’s here.” Even then,
he’d still been crying.

She’d given herself three years after that to build her design business into something she could market on the Internet. The
travel had been grueling, but her mother had agreed to take care of Ben. It had been horrible being away from him so much,
almost like losing him every time she left for the airport, every time she kissed him good-bye.

But it wasn’t going to last forever. She had a goal in mind. Once she’d proven to her father that she could build her business
into something that would rival her sisters’ careers, she would set about building a family that would rival her sisters’,
too.

Somewhere during the middle of that was when she went to Chicago.

Somewhere during the middle of that was when she’d met Eric.

Ever since Eric had first introduced her to Seth, Pam had been trying to connect with Eric’s son.

Maybe she struggled because she’d grown up with girls. Maybe because she’d been so busy trying to prove herself to her father
that she’d missed being a teenager. Maybe Seth resented her; maybe he was the one who kept putting up the walls. For whatever
reason, Seth walked into the room and Pam felt like she might as well be trying to make friends with a fence post.

I really admire you, Seth
, she’d said to him once when he’d come to visit, hoping to get him started talking.
You’re doing so well
. She could have asked,
What kind of music do you like?
but it sounded like she was fishing.
You want me to take you shopping?
but that sounded like she was trying to buy him out. And every time she tried, whenever they were alone without Eric, Seth
barely grunted a reply.

Pam felt drawn to Seth. It went beyond loving Eric. She saw Seth caught in the middle of something and she wanted to rescue
him the way she’d once rescued Ben. But Eric didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong. And no matter what she felt, she
wasn’t Seth’s mother.