American Wife

party, your own parade. And they were so happy, my husband and my daughter, that I couldn’t reprimand him; I only watched as they goofed around. Charlie said, “Hey, Ella, you want to hear what I bought today?”

“A hot-air balloon!” she shouted.

“Even better.” Charlie grinned. He actually didn’t seem that drunk; cheerful, yes, but perfectly coherent. “I bought the Brewers baseball team,” he said. “You ready to go to lots and lots of ball games?”

“Yay!” Ella cried.

Charlie looked at me. “Nice to see that someone appreciates it.”

“Can Kioko Akatsu come?” Ella asked.

“Honey, Kioko would have to take a twelve-hour plane flight to get here,” I said.

Ella began clapping and then held Charlie’s hands with her own, trying to make him clap. In her imitation of an adult man, she intonated, “I am the best baseball player who ever lived. You are the stupidest person in the world.”

Charlie broke his hands free of her hold and pressed them against the sides of her head. “I am the champion of Milwaukee, Wisconsin,” he said. “You are the suckers with nine-to-five office jobs.”

WHEN I CLIMBED into bed, it was a quarter to twelve, and Charlie was lying on his back with his eyes shut. I sensed he wasn’t asleep, though, and I said, “I think we should pay for Jessica Sutton to go to Biddle.”

His eyes opened, then scrunched into a squint. He sounded confused rather than confrontational when he said, “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I can’t stand the idea of her being at Stevens. I called Nancy Dwyer in the admissions office to see if it’s too late for Jessica to start in the fall, and it sounds like they can fit her in to the seventh grade, but they’ve already allotted all the financial aid.”

“That just reminded me.” He rolled onto his side. “Guess who I saw tonight?”

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to focus on the conversation we’re having.”

“Just guess.” He grinned.

Coldly, I said, “I know who you saw, and I don’t think it’s funny at all.”

“You have no idea!” He still was jovial, pleased with himself.

“Charlie, Shannon called me as soon as you dropped her off, and she seemed very rattled, which I can’t blame her for. Do you have any idea how you must have come across? You’re twice her age, you’re her employer. I don’t know that we can ever ask her to sit for us again, and even if we do, I doubt she’ll say yes. I wouldn’t if I were her.”

“You’re nuts—she had a great time. She’s a solid person, real salt-of-the-earth. Did you know her dad’s a plumber?”

I was sitting up, leaning against the headboard of our bed, and I folded my arms in front of me. It was hard to know how to respond, hard to explain something so blazingly obvious. I took a deep breath. “She’s our sitter,” I said. “You’re forty-two years old, and you took her to a bar.”

“But it’s okay for you to take Miss Ruby to a play?” He smirked, and I understood: I’d been set up. He’d orchestrated his evening for the sole purpose of asking me this question. It was the reason he had picked Shannon, of all people—not because he’d enjoy her company but to teach me a lesson. And it was the same reason that since Shannon’s call, I had felt deeply troubled without feeling romantically threatened or betrayed as a wife. Charlie just wasn’t a philanderer. A flirt, yes, with men as well as women, but I couldn’t picture him embarking on a real affair, the subterfuge and logistical complications. Though he might mock or humiliate me, he would not be unfaithful.

I said, “You know what the difference is.”

He shrugged. “Housekeeper, babysitter—seems pretty similar to me.”

Our eyes met, and I wanted to slap his face or shove his chest. Instead, I pushed back the covers and stood. “What’s wrong with you? Can’t you see this isn’t a joke? And Shannon told me how much you drank—what if you’d been pulled over? What if you’d crashed your car and gotten yourself killed, or if you’d killed someone else?”

He rolled onto his back again, this time leaning on his elbows. Slowly, calmly, he said, “Alice, I’m not real sure you’re in a position to be lecturing me on driving.”

It was amazing—in the last few weeks, each time I thought Charlie had said the worst thing he possibly could, a few days would pass and he’d outdo himself. Furiously, I strode around the foot of the bed, and when I’d reached his nightstand, I yanked open the lower drawer, pulled out the issues of Penthouse, and flung them at him one after the other. “You’re awful!” I said, and I had a dim knowledge that I was shouting, and that Ella was asleep a few doors down, but I felt power-less to quiet myself. “You’re a spoiled brat, and you have no regard for anyone except yourself! You think that life is so amusing, so easy, and the only reason that’s true is that you’re insulated by being rich. You’ve always had people doing the dirty work for you, getting you in to schools, offering you a job at the family company, offering you a base-ball team, for God’s sake, and now you have me to smooth over all your odd, offensive behavior. But I’m tired of it, Charlie, do you understand? I’ve had enough. Just because you never get in trouble, it doesn’t mean you haven’t done anything wrong.”

There were no magazines left. Charlie was shielding his face with his hands, a gesture of self-protection, and in the space between his fingers, his expression was surprised but still not entirely serious. It seemed he was holding out hope that I was kidding. I turned on my heel, walking toward the door.

“Lindy—” he said. “Jesus, will you calm down—”

I went to the guest room and shut the door behind me, and I was shaking. How could Charlie and I possibly remain married? And then I heard footsteps in the hall, and I was glad he had come to fight it out, it seemed somehow adult of him, or at least this was what I thought until I heard a tiny voice say, “Mommy?” When I opened the door, Ella began to cry.

WE ALL WERE quiet on the flight to Newark, just as we’d been quiet at the house in the morning and quiet driving to the airport, and the quiet continued as we picked up the rental car and merged onto I-95 South. Charlie