Young Wives (3 page)

“Daddy might be taking us all out to dinner on Friday. And then it’s the weekend.” Frank never worked on the weekend. He was a really attentive father, and both Frankie and Jenna worshipped him. “Look, Daddy’s been working very hard for us lately. Let’s bake him a cake for tomorrow. Okay?”

“Yes!” In a second, Jenna turned from sulky preteen to delighted child. “Can I frost it all myself? And can I lick the bowl?”

A sugar promise did wonders in attitude adjustment, Michelle knew, but she wasn’t a total pushover. “You can frost it alone, but you have to share the bowl with Frankie,” Michelle told Jenna for what also must have been the three-thousandth time. She looked at her watch. “Now just
five
minutes of VH1. Then lights out.” Jenna smiled, snuggled under her quilt, and sighed. Michelle knew she’d be sleeping in less than three minutes and made a mental note to come back in after straightening out the bathroom to shut off the TV.

She wiped up the splashes, put two washcloths up to soak, then picked up and refolded three bath towels. (Two children and three towels? It didn’t add up.) She Soft-Scrubbed the sink and Windexed and wiped the mirror. Frankie, she noticed, had remembered to put his dirty clothes in the hamper (good) but he’d also thrown in one of his little Nike Airmax sneakers (bad—there would have been chaos before breakfast). Michelle left the bathroom, its towels hung, its tile gleaming, and looked in on Frankie, who had already tossed off his quilt. She put his sneakers beside the bed, covered him, and kissed his sweet, high forehead—just like his father’s. Then she shut off the TV in Jenna’s room. Jenna murmured something in mild protest from her bed, but the lure of sleep was too strong. Jenna held Pinkie, the toy rabbit she’d had since she was a baby, in a stranglehold that was her precursor to sleep. When she turned toward the wall, Michelle smiled.

Then she went into her bedroom. She got out her best silk nightgown, took the Joy perfume bottle from the bureau, and went into the bathroom she shared with Frank. She began to run a bath but first, carefully, hung the shimmering gown over the shower door so the folds would fall out. Then she looked into the mirror.

Michelle smiled. She was taller than average: she liked to say she was five-foot-eleven, though she was really only five-ten-and-a-half. Frank was her height, but he liked her tall. Way tall. So she
always
wore heels, except on her walks with Jada. Height helped her—it made her look much more attractive. But she admitted she was good-looking. She’d been lucky—she’d gotten the pert nose and strong jawline of her Scotch heritage without the really narrow mouth. In fact, her mouth was so full that it made her self-conscious. In school girls had made fun of her—calling her “fish mouth” and “trout”—but the boys had flocked to her.

She shook her head and her hair gleamed, but the roots…She’d have to make an appointment to touch up her blond color. Her complexion could carry off the lightness. The only disadvantage she had was her skin; it was so delicate it showed every change in her mood by flushing or paling, but also—if she wasn’t careful—wrinkling like the poppy petals she swept off the patio all summer. Michelle perpetually slathered on creams and potions. Even with them she knew she had less than a decade left before the lines, a tiny network of wrinkles, kicked in. Oh, well. She still looked good.

With the steam from the bath filling the room she could look into the reflective glass and see herself as she’d been at twenty-one, a decade ago, and it didn’t seem as if there had been a lot of change for the worse. Maybe her highlights were helped along just a little bit, but
that
wasn’t a bad thing. Okay, her waist had expanded from her pregnancies, but only by an inch or two. She peered at herself, her green eyes moving along her mirrored form. Her breasts…well, they had also expanded from the pregnancies, which was good—at least it made her waist look smaller. She pulled her sweater off and admired herself. Not bad. She allowed herself a smile. In an hour Frank would be home and admire her even more. She reached over her head to do up her hair—but just for now. Frank liked her hair down in bed. And she liked Frank to get what he wanted, as long as he wanted
her
.

In which Angela rings her father, rings the airport, and rings up a tab

“Five months. I don’t know. Uh-uh. Because he
told
me.”

Angela was crying, getting mucus and tears on the receiver of the phone in the vestibule of the Marblehead Yacht Club. Some man, leaving the restroom, gave her a look, then averted his eyes as if from an accident. Well, it was a wreck, or she was. She looked down at the Shreve box, still clutched in her right hand. She doubted she could open either of her fists again.

“He
told
you?” her father was asking. “The cold Wasp son-of-a-bitch rat-bastid
told
you he’d been sleeping with someone else? And on your anniversary?”

Angie couldn’t speak. She nodded—not that her father, four hundred miles south in Westchester County, could see her. But he heard her gurgle. “Brutal,” he said. “Where are you right this minute?” he snapped.

“At a pay phone. At the club.” Now a woman walked past Angie, glanced at her, then actually turned back to stare. Her cold eyes seemed to say, “Don’t behave that way
here
.” She was about Reid’s mother’s age. She probably knew both Reid’s parents. Fuck her! Angela defiantly wiped at her eyes, then her nose, with her hand. The woman shook her head in disgust. Angie looked down. Her fingers were a mess, covered with eye makeup, but she managed to flip the bird at the old bat, who stalked off.

“Angie, baby, didn’t I tell you never to trust a man with Roman numerals after his name?” her father asked. Oh God. Was she going to get a speech? Angie had tried to call her mother first, then her best friend Lisa, but had only gotten their machines.

“Please, Daddy. No lectures. Not from you.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I can’t believe it. I want to kill him. What should I do?”

“It’s okay, baby. It’s okay,” her father soothed.

He was using the voice she trusted, the one she always obeyed. He’d used that voice when he had told her not to worry, she’d ace her SATs, the one that promised her she’d get into law school. Her daddy, despite his flaws, did love her.

“Listen to me,” he said. “Here’s what you do. You hang up the phone. You walk out of that hellhole and get into a taxi. The last Delta shuttle to New York leaves from Logan in forty-five minutes. You can make it, easy. And I’ll be at the Marine Air Terminal to pick you up. Not one of my drivers. Me.”

“I don’t know if I can make the plane. When I tell Reid I—”

“You don’t have to tell that bastid a single fucking thing,” her father spat. “Don’t you go back to that table.”

“You mean just…leave? But…I don’t even have my purse with me,” Angie said. She felt naked, helpless. But the thought of crossing that room, looking at Reid—impossible! While just leaving at least had…dignity. “I have no money, no I.D…”

“I’ll have a prepaid ticket waiting at the counter,” her father told her. “They’ll ask you to tell them your mother’s maiden name and give your social security number.” Angie nodded.

“But security. I.D. I…I don’t have
anything
.” That wasn’t technically true. She still clutched the Shreve box in her hand.

“I’ll tell them how your grandma is dying and how close you were,” he said.

“Nana? Okay.” She began to cry again. “Thank you, Daddy,” she said. “God, I’m so ashamed.”

“Ashamed? What have
you
got to be ashamed of?”

“Being so fucking stupid,” Angie told him. “You never trusted him.”

“Well, there is that,” he admitted. “Forget it. Women are all blind or else there’d be no human race. Just leave the bum. Let him sit there and wonder if you fell into the shitter and drowned.” Anthony Romazzano waited for a laugh but didn’t get one. “Okay,” her father said. “You promise me you’ll hang up and walk right out the door?”

“Yes,” Angela agreed. She hung up the phone and turned herself around. She took a deep breath and pulled down on the cuffs of her sleeves as if the gesture built up enough courage for her to take the first step. She ought to go into the ladies room and clean up, but what difference would it make? She’d only cry some more. When she walked toward the exit door, she felt as if everyone was watching her and that they knew what had happened. She couldn’t believe she’d never see Reid again. But the fact was that she caught a last glimpse of her husband as she walked past the dining room door. He was calmly leaning back in his chair, looking out at the water. Why was it he always looked as if nothing bothered him? So pulled together?

With all her built-up rage, Angie pushed hard on the club door and was blasted in the face with cold salt air. She waved to the first taxi in line. “Logan Airport, please. Delta shuttle.” Then she again burst into noisy tears.

It wasn’t until they got to the Callahan Tunnel and its inevitable traffic that Angie realized she might miss the flight. But since she didn’t have a penny on her, she couldn’t even pay the driver. “Please hurry,” she said. He’d already looked at her once or twice in the rearview mirror.

“Did you say Delta or USAir?” he asked. He had a lilt in his voice. Irish. Just off the boat. Driving a cab the way her father had, back in New York; but her father had gotten into the limo business, gotten rich, and married a nice Jewish girl.

“Delta,” she told the driver, and then explained about Nana. What would he do when she tried to stiff him? Call the cops?

Well, if he did, she’d telephone her father. She thought of Tony, waiting at the other end of the trip. She was grateful to him for his help, but at the same time she couldn’t avoid remembering that he had done the same thing to her mother that Reid was doing to her now. The only difference was, her father did it
after
he and her mom had been married for twenty-something years, and he hadn’t told her mom until he’d been caught. He still swore that it shouldn’t have broken up the marriage.

“Oops. Sorry. I missed the Delta turn. I’ll have to go around again,” the cabbie said. Perfect, she thought. Now she’d probably miss the shuttle and wind up sleeping in the airport. As if she could sleep. Sleep! She wasn’t even sure she could go on breathing. She felt as if there were jagged pieces of bone or steel or glass in her chest. Every time she attempted a deep breath, or when a sob shook her, the pieces would meet and rub and tear. How had this happened to her? She’d been so careful.

She’d waited until she was finished with college and almost done with law school before she had allowed herself to become serious about a man. She’d always been smart, and independent. She’d wanted to do something with the law to help people. She’d dated, but had been wary of men, and she’d worked hard during her internships and summers, giving her time to Legal Aid instead of dinner dates. She still gave money to “Save the Children,” participated in AIDS walks, and worked for Meals-On-Wheels once a month. She was a good person, a strong person. She had judgment, intelligence, and persistence.

She’d listened to her mother’s advice, and absorbed the lessons—all bad—of her mother’s friends’ marriages. She’d avoided alcoholics, neurotics, and the generally misogynistic. And she’d finally picked the man who pursued her, not a man she’d pursued. He’d come from a family in which there seemed to be no history of womanizing: Reid’s father was cold, not hot. She’d worried that Reid might not marry her, that her family wasn’t up to his social standards, but never that he’d cheat on her.
How had this happened to her
?

The taxi was pulling up to the Delta terminal. Angie looked down at her hands. One held the crumpled mass of yellow pages, now all sodden, that she’d torn from the phone booth at the club. In the other she still clutched the Shreve box that contained the perfect sapphire ring.

The driver pulled up to the curb and braked. Then, in an act of courtesy usually unknown to North Shore cabbies, he actually got out of the cab and opened the door for her. “Sorry for your pain,” he said, his Irish accent thick. “I really loved my granny, rest her soul.” He looked at her, and Angie knew her hair must be wild, her face a swollen, streaked mess. “That’ll be forty-one dollars,” the driver added, almost reluctantly.

There was only one thing to do. She opened the Shreve, Crump & Lowe box and took out the ring. “Here,” she said, handing it to him. “I forgot my purse. But you can have this. It’s worth a lot. I know my Nana would want you to have it.” Then, the empty box still clutched in her hand, she walked through the airport’s electronic eye doors, away from her marriage, and up to the Delta ticket desk.

Wherein we meet Jada R. Jackson, and we discover the cost of living in Republican Westchester, as well as the state of her union

Jada looked at her watch, realized it was too dark in the car to see the dial, and checked the clock on the dash. Damn! It was half past eight already. The kids would have eaten and—if she was lucky—be settled down to bed and homework. Her eyes flicked away from the dash but not before she noticed, with a start, that the gas gauge was almost on empty. Damn it! Now, when she was so late, she’d have to take the time to stop and fill up. Why was it that Clinton, who was unemployed and had the whole day to get errands done, had used her car yesterday but not bothered to fill it up?

She burned with indignation. She knew why. Clinton’s mind was on things other than her convenience.

Jada pulled into the island at the Shell station, turned off the ignition, and waited for full—or, for that matter, even partial—service. She’d had to learn from experience that her time was more valuable than money, but if they kept her waiting here for this long at the pump, what was the point of paying more? She beeped and reluctantly an older man came out of the glass enclosure to help her. “Fill it up” was all she told him and, to speed the process along, she flipped him her Shell card at the same time before she rolled up the window to keep out the October chill. The card slipped from the geezer’s fingers and she watched as it skittered across the oily macadam; he had to squat to pick it up. She sighed and turned up the heat setting, not that it would do any good with the motor off.