American Wife

“My wallet is in the car, which is over there.” I pointed. “The blue Volvo station wagon, do you see it? You can watch me walk there, and then I’ll come right back. Ella, will you come with me?” I smiled at the boy and at the other people who were observing us, then detached Ella from my torso and took her hand. As we headed in the direction of the car, she let her hair hang in front of her face. “I hate it here,” she said softly.

WHEN WE GOT back to the house, Jadey had called three times; Lars had dutifully noted the time of each call, down to the minute, on the pad of paper by the kitchen phone.

I went upstairs to return the call; I didn’t particularly want to talk to her, because I didn’t know what there was to say about the situation, but if I didn’t, it seemed clear she would keep trying, which would presumably increase my mother’s suspicion. And my mother had to suspect already—it could only be her midwestern reticence that was preventing her from asking me outright why we had descended so abruptly on her household.

“So you did it,” Jadey said. In the background, I could hear Lucky barking, and Jadey said to someone, “Put him in the yard.” I heard Winnie protesting, and Jadey said, “I’m not asking your brother, I’m asking you.” To me, she said, “Chas showed up here close to midnight last night.”

“How did he seem?”

“I only saw him for about a minute, and he took off early this morning, but he told Arthur you’re pissed at him. You didn’t file for divorce, did you?”

“No,” I said quickly. “No, we’re just—Ella and I are spending some time here for a while.”

“Alice, this is me you’re talking to. I won’t repeat what you say, especially to Chas, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

I was more worried that she’d repeat it to Billy Torks or to one of her female friends.

“Were Reunions a disaster?” she said. “Remember what I told you—these guys set foot on campus and they go crazy. They get so caught up in the moment.”

“It wasn’t that,” I said. “Not completely, anyway. Jadey, I appreciate your concern, I really do, but I just need some distance.”

“No, do what you have to.” She lowered her voice—perhaps Winnie had returned to the room. “When you’re ready to come back, we’ll be waiting for you.”

THAT NIGHT, ELLA and Lars went to bed around the same time, and my mother and I watched Knots Landing together. I had assumed we’d be chatting while the show played, but to my surprise, I could tell from her body language that she’d become quite a devoted viewer, so I remained quiet except during commercials. When the program finished, she turned toward me, smiling in a shy way, and said, “I suppose it’s a bit pulpy.”

“Pulp has its charms.”

“I’m so sorry about poor Ella at the beach today. Do you know, I believe that was Tim Ziemniak who scolded her. I peeked over at the ice-cream truck as we were leaving.”

“Roy and Patty’s son?” Roy had been my classmate all through school, and his father had been my dentist; Patty had also attended Benton County Central High but graduated a few years after us.

“I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it,” my mother said. “He couldn’t be but fourteen or fifteen, and I’ll bet he takes his responsibilities awfully seriously.”

“Ella will be all right,” I said.

“Having her here, it makes me think of you at that age.”

“Oh, Ella’s a lot spunkier than I was,” I said. “She’s a real ball of energy.”

“Well—” My mother paused, and her tone was reflective in that way that is inevitably sad, because the past is sad. “What I remember,” she said, “is that you were always such a dear little girl.”

I felt a great surge of affection for her in this moment; I had been so lucky to be raised, to be loved, by a calm, uncomplicated mother. I often had not appreciated her, I thought, overshadowed as she was by my more showy and entertaining grandmother. But really, the older I got, the more I observed the cruelties family members inflicted on one another, out of jealousy or ignorance or private despair, and sometimes for sport—people could be so savage in such banal, daily ways. This was what I didn’t want for Ella: for nothing but chance, the chance of her birth, to put her at the mercy of Charlie’s selfishness and immaturity. To be around an adult who acted thoughtlessly and impulsively and then to watch it go unchecked, unpunished—I felt that could give a child a misunderstanding of the world, hindering her ability to see logical patterns. I did not care if Ella went to Princeton, if she was exceptionally pretty, if she grew up to marry a rich man, or really, if she married at all—there were many incarnations of her I felt confident I could embrace, a hippie or a housewife or a career woman. But what I did care about, what I wanted most fervently, was for her to understand that hard work paid off, that decency begat decency, that humility was not a raincoat you occasionally pulled on when you thought conditions called for it, but rather a constant way of existing in the world, knowing that good and bad luck touched everyone and none of us was fully responsible for our fortunes or tragedies. Above all, I wanted my daughter to understand that many people were guided by bitterness and that it was best to avoid these individuals—their moods and behavior were a hornet’s nest you had no possible reason to do anything other than bypass and ignore. And I loved Ella, I loved her immeasurably, but I wondered if she wasn’t already being influenced by what was worst in Charlie and by my indulgence of his shortcomings. She would mimic us—surely she would, all children did—and would it be his entitled sulkiness or my martyrish passivity that she’d emulate? I didn’t want her growing up thinking that I endorsed his choices; at the same time, I didn’t know how to give voice to my dissent except by leaving him.

Beside me on the living room sofa, my mother said, “Will Charlie be calling again tonight, do you think? If he will, I might as well unplug the phone in our room.”

“I hate to inconvenience you,” I said, but she’d already stood.

“It won’t take a minute.”

In her absence, I looked around the living room, which still contained the broad square couch and chairs my parents had purchased in the early fifties, the maroon-spined Encyclopaedia Britannicas, Lars’s recliner, the painting over the fireplace—a knockoff of Picasso’s Le Guitariste that my grandmother had given them one Christmas and which I am pretty sure neither my mother nor my father had ever liked.