American Wife

“I wish I knew. I found out about tonight a few minutes ago, and he wasn’t the one who told me. I don’t think—forgive me, Joe, for saying this to you of all people—but I don’t think I can stay with him. Every day, every few hours, I go back and forth, as if everything he says or does is proof that I should either stick it out or leave. It’s starting to make me fear for my sanity.”

Again, Joe was quiet for over a minute before saying, “You never know the nature of another couple’s marriage, do you? I’ve always thought the two of you seem wonderfully complementary. But I’ll tell you what else—that weekend you and Charlie got engaged, we were stunned. My extended family, I mean. We heard about it, and we were only just getting to know you, but we thought, That sweet, sweet girl is marrying Charlie?”

Simultaneously, I felt my lips curve up and my eyes flood. With the back of my hand, I wiped my nose. “The engagement didn’t happen in Halcyon,” I said. “We were already engaged, but we didn’t tell people right away.”

“I met you down on their dock, remember that?” Joe said. “I came back from fishing with Ed and John, we puttered up, and you were standing there in a yellow dress”—(he was right, that yellow knit dress with the collar, I had forgotten all about it)—“and I thought—I suppose I’m only admitting this because it was so long ago and because I’ve consumed more than my share of Bud Light tonight—but I thought, Who’s that gorgeous girl? I was dumbstruck. Then Charlie took your hand.”

The truth was that I didn’t remember meeting Joe. I remembered meeting Charlie’s parents that day, and Jadey later that night, when I’d foolishly allowed myself to get drunk, and I remembered knowing Joe later on, talking politely to him, when he seemed handsome and reserved and maybe the slightest bit dull, when it never occurred to me that I registered with him more than anyone else’s wife. Did I register with him more than other wives?

“That was an overwhelming visit,” I said. “God bless the Blackwells, but—I’m sure you understand. That’s what’s so nice about talking to you, Joe, that I don’t have to explain.”

Joe shook his head. “Look at us,” he said. “Do you think we should find some undergraduates and warn them to be careful whom they pick to spend their lives with?”

“As if they’d listen.”

We sat there on the steps in companionable silence; we could hear the distant songs of a few bands playing at once in different tents. “I suppose I’ve always nursed a small crush on you,” Joe said. “In light of both our circumstances, it’s made me stay away. Not literally, I don’t mean, but to keep myself at a distance.” When I didn’t reply, he said, “I hope I’m not making you uncomfortable.”

“Joe, I’m honored.” I patted his knee in what I meant to be a friendly way, though as soon as I’d done it, I realized it might have seemed flirtatious, and in fact it may have been flirtatious. I had lost my bearings—I had started losing them before, at some indeterminate point, and now they were gone entirely.

“I won’t try to advise you on what’s happening with Charlie,” Joe said. “That’s none of my business. But if there was ever a chance, and I know, with Halcyon and my family and his family, I know we’d be opening a can of worms, I’m well aware, but if you ever thought the two of us—”

I cut him off by kissing him. I leaned forward abruptly—gracelessly, I suspect—and I pressed my mouth against his, and we kissed hungrily, and at first it was all-consuming, it was forbidden and wrong and exciting, but very little time had passed before I became aware of an unflattering comparison between the way he kissed and the way Charlie did. Joe was not as adept. It had been so long since I’d kissed anyone besides my husband that I’d forgotten there could be variations on it, or skill involved, but Joe—I felt cruel noticing this—drooled a bit, there was an excess of saliva that accompanied his tongue and lips. I pulled away and quickly stood. I brought a hand to my chest. “Joe, I—I don’t—I need to find Ella.”

He stared at me with passion.

At a loss as to what else to do or say, I made a gesture that was not unlike curtsying. “Forgive me,” I said, and I hurried away. I did not even have the excuse of attributing my behavior to alcohol: Joe, by his own admission, had been tipsy, but I’d been perfectly sober.

BACK IN THE dorm, once Ella was asleep, I packed—our flight out of Newark was at one on Sunday—and the questions that sprang up in my head felt cliched and overwrought, as if perhaps I’d heard them asked by a naive wife in a movie, or a public service announcement on TV about drug addiction: How many times before and how often and why? Maybe when I said why to Charlie, my voice would quaver, and that would reveal just how betrayed I felt.

But no—I did not want to be that wife, did not want to have that conversation. It was beneath me; it would give his worst behavior an attention it didn’t deserve.

He returned to the dorm earlier than I expected, before midnight. More matter-of-factly than angrily, he said, “I didn’t know where you’d gone,” and I brought my finger to my lips, indicating Ella, now asleep. He lowered his voice. “Kind of a crappy band, if you ask me. Just the idea of a cover band is pathetic when you think about it, living off someone else’s glory.”

Did he have any idea? He had no idea. What other conclusion was there to draw? I was folding a pair of his pants, and I set them in our suitcase.

He stepped close to me, half whispering. “You’re not pissed about before, are you?” So he had some idea, but such a narrow, watered-down one—it was close enough to having no idea. “You know how being around these goons gets me riled up.” He leaned in to kiss me. “Brings out my inner eighteen-year-old.” He grinned, and I felt both astonishment—how could our experiences of our relationship be so grossly different?—and also a relief at having chosen not to confront him. It was the right choice.

He kissed me some more, my cheeks and neck, he set his hands on my hips, and I realized he wanted us to have sex. I pointed to the wall and said, “Ella’s on the other side.”

“We can keep it down. Well, you might not be able to.” He pulled the peach-colored blouse I was wearing (a nod to orange without being the real, aggressive thing) out of my white pants and stuck his hands beneath it. He reached around and unfastened my bra.

I acquiesced. It was easier than talking, it would be a balm to the discord of the weekend. The mattress springs were squeaky, which I found distracting, but I was distracted anyway. Lying on top of me, pumping in and out, Charlie gazed down and said, “You look beautiful, Lindy.” He smelled of sweat and beer and some essential Charlieness, the smell of himself, that I was very accustomed to.