American Wife

“Don’t swear at me, Charlie.”

“Then don’t be such a bitch.”

I held the receiver away from my ear, as if I’d received an electric shock. How had we devolved to this point? That Charlie was crude wasn’t a surprise, but that he was crude toward me—it had not always been so. I had once believed he had a sweeter and more tender way with me than with anyone else, and it made all his vulgarity almost flattering by contrast. But now I was down in the frat house basement with everyone else, expected to chug beer and laugh at off-color jokes while my back was slapped a little too hard.

I thought he might be as disturbed as I was by what he’d just said, but when he spoke again, his voice contained not remorse but annoyance—he was annoyed with me. He said, “You enjoy your quiet night at home, all right? And I’ll see if I can’t find some folks more in the mood to celebrate.”

WHEN THE PHONE rang again, I hoped it would be Charlie, having cooled off, but it was Joe Thayer who said, “I heard from Carolyn about what happened at the party, and I—”

“Joe, I’m mortified. I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I hope you and Carolyn know—”

I had interrupted him, and now he interrupted me. He said, “I knew you’d be chastising yourself, and I’m sure Carolyn gave you an earful, but Alice, please don’t worry. Take it from me, Caro’s filled with a lot of anger these days. Now, everyone would prefer that this hadn’t happened, you as much as us, but if that’s the worst Megan ever gets exposed to, she’ll be a lucky girl. It just flabbergasts me what’s on television these days—have you seen the program Married with Children?”

“I’ve heard of it. Joe, thank you for understanding, but I hope you know I really am sorry.”

“Surely the magazines aren’t yours, Alice.” In Joe’s voice was a note of humor that I realized then had been there all along.

“Well, no,” I said. “No, that’s not the kind of thing I read.”

“Don’t forget how long I’ve known your husband,” Joe said. “I remember when he was a kid up in Halcyon doing the old trick with the Indian girl on the Land O’Lakes package.” I couldn’t decide if it was cute or depressing that Charlie had shown this same trick to Ella just a few months before—cutting out the Indian maiden’s knees and placing them at her chest so if you lifted a flap, it appeared she was propping up her own ample breasts. Apparently, even after three decades, some things never got stale.

“The first thing I thought when Carolyn told me, I have to confess,” Joe was saying, “is, If I had a wife like Alice, I wouldn’t be resorting to those rags. Charlie is a man who doesn’t recognize what he has, and when we hang up, you tell him I said that.”

Joe’s tone was cheerful, and I tried to match it. I said, “You’re kind.”

“Much more important for our purposes,” he said, “is that after I saw you at the gas station, I booked a ticket to Princeton for Reunions. I’d been so hung up on how discouraging it would be to go alone, and then I thought, That’s silly. Being among friends could be just what the doctor ordered.”

“Joe, that’s wonderful. Bully for you. Now do they have you wearing some sort of crazy black-and-orange kimono?”

“I waited so long to register that I’m picking up the outfit on campus, and I can only imagine what it’ll be. Let’s make sure to look for each other at the P-rade, can we do that? I fear you might be the only other sane person there.”

“Oh, you overestimate my sanity. I’ve been practicing my locomotive.”

“You know, I could never get Carolyn to learn the cheers,” Joe said. “Do you think I ought to have seen that as a sign?”

AS SOON AS we’d hung up, the phone rang again, and when I answered, Jadey said, “Did Chas buy the Brewers?”

I hesitated. “Sort of.”

“When were you planning to tell me?”

“It wasn’t final until today, so I just found out myself. You know it’s not only Charlie, right? It’s a whole group of investors, and his contribution—Well, I’m sure it’s less than you’d think.” The irony was that with Jadey’s inherited money, she and Arthur probably would have been in a position to make a far more significant investment. Had it been only chance, Arthur’s decision not to attend the game on that Sunday, that had excluded him from the deal?

Jadey said, “Are you gonna get us the best box seats ever?”

I laughed. “The ones we already have aren’t so bad.”

“Call me the minute you get back from Princeton, okay? I swear it was a hundred and fifty degrees at Arthur’s twentieth, but we still had so much fun. And remember, Chas’ll probably tie one on this weekend, but cut him some slack, because so will everyone else.”

I thought of telling her about what had happened with Megan Thayer, and maybe also about Charlie calling me a bitch, but Jadey and I would have found ourselves in a forty-five-minute conversation and I had too much to do. Besides, I didn’t want Ella to overhear. “I’ll call you on Monday,” I said.

____

FOR ELLA’S DINNER, I made toast with melted mozzarella cheese—pizza toast, we called it, though there was no tomato sauce involved, and its resemblance to pizza was rather fleeting—and for myself, I reheated a leftover burger from the class party and dipped it in Dijon mustard; if Charlie was hungry when he came home, he could eat a burger, too. Because it wasn’t a school night, I let Ella watch The Cosby Show—she adored the character of Rudy, and Theo was her second favorite—and she lay on our bed in her ridiculous black dress while I packed, walking between her room and ours. I called to her, “I assume you want to bring Bear-Bear.”

“Don’t pack him yet!” she exclaimed. “I need him for tonight.” Bear-Bear wasn’t a conventional plush toy but more of a rag doll, covered in a patchwork of reddish fabrics. My mother had made him when Ella was born, and he was the only animal who still shared her bed every night.

A Different World came on after The Cosby Show, and