American Wife

was staying with him in her room off the kitchen. She was probably also cooking him breakfast and dinner.

“You’re absolutely right,” I said. “I’m sorry, and I’m glad you called. I’m not sure if your mother has ever mentioned that Charlie—This will sound very silly, but he’s afraid of the dark.”

“Oh, I know.” Yvonne laughed. “Believe me, we know all about the monsters under Charlie B’s bed.”

“I won’t deny that he’s unusual,” I said.

“I try not to judge.” Yvonne’s tone implied that she wasn’t succeeding, at least in this case. “I’m just concerned about Mama. Now, when I talked to Jadey, she said she doesn’t know when you’re coming home, but she’s fine having Charlie there, so if you want to call him, or you want me to call him, either way. He’d probably listen more to you, but if—”

“I promise that I’ll take care of it,” I said. “Everyone will sleep in their own beds tonight.”

BACK IN MARONEE, I dropped Ella at Jadey’s—Jadey shrieked with joy when she saw me, and agreed to take the girls to the pool if I promised to go on a walk with her that evening—and then I went to our house to sort the mail and listen to the phone messages, to throw out the rotting food from the refrigerator and empty the trash and make our bed from what was, I presumed, the one night Charlie had slept, or tried to sleep, in it. Then I drove to Harold and Priscilla’s, where Miss Ruby was watching The People’s Court on the small television in the kitchen. I told her to go home and take the next week off—I would speak with Priscilla—and I collected Charlie’s belongings. He had been sleeping not in an upstairs bedroom but on the couch in his father’s study, which was nearer to Miss Ruby’s room off the kitchen, and she had obviously been tidying his possessions. I took the alarm clock off the coffee table, folded the sleeping bag, which was from our house, and retrieved his toothbrush and toothpaste from the sink in the powder room under the stairs. I surveyed the second floor, but Charlie seemed to have been showering elsewhere—either at the country club or back at our house.

By this point, it was after four in the afternoon, and I drove to County Stadium. Finding an unlocked entrance, a non-game entrance, took some time, but eventually I saw a maintenance man leaving through nondescript metal double doors. He led me back in, and inside, I ran into another man, an older fellow who may have been the third- base coach, and that gentleman directed me to a third man, this one in a short-sleeved shirt and gray slacks, and after I’d explained separately to all of them who I was and asked where I might find my husband, at last I reached Charlie’s office. It was smaller than I’d imagined, with windows onto the hallway but not to the outside; it was about the same size as the principal’s anteroom, where the secretary sat, in the lower school of Biddle. Charlie had hung nothing on the walls, and the surface of his desk was mostly empty, with a few stacks of paper. He was sitting with his legs up on the desk and his ankles crossed—he wore black wing tips—and he held open a manila file folder and was reading.

The door was open, but I knocked on the aluminum frame. I said, “Am I interrupting?”

When he looked up, his expression was one of surprised pleasure, and also of wariness. He didn’t stand, but he pulled his legs from the desk and set them on the floor. “This is unexpected.”

Given how breezy he’d been when we’d spoken on the phone, the thought had crossed my mind that maybe he’d changed his mind about wanting us—wanting me—to return. I said, “How are you doing?” Before he could answer, I added, “I think it’s time for Ella and me to come home. Do you agree?”

He bowed his head. Was he considering the question? A nervousness came over me. When almost a minute had passed in silence, I said, “Charlie?”

He lifted his head at last, and he seemed choked up. “You’ve caught me off guard, is all,” he said. “Of course you should come home, absolutely. Lindy, I owe you a tremendous apology. I’ve behaved dishonorably as a husband.”

“What? I—No, Charlie, that’s not what I’m saying. Obviously, we both know that things can improve, but . . .” I trailed off; he was shaking his head.

“The Holy Spirit was working through you, Lindy. The Lord caused you to leave so that I’d see my sins and repent, and there’s no doubt about it, I have sinned. But I’m a new man. I’ve been reborn, and if God can forgive me, I hope you can, too. I want you to know I haven’t had a drop to drink in eight days.”

I half expected him to smirk, to lapse into laughter, saying, Just kidding—you fucking believed me! Admit it, you believed me! Except that he didn’t say it, and he wasn’t kidding.

“Is this—” I paused. “Jadey told me you’ve been spending time with someone named Reverend Randy?”

“He’s an extraordinary man, Lindy. You’ll be very impressed when you meet him. He’s thought long and hard about these issues, and he knows the struggle, he understands how hard it is not to sin, but boy, it’s inspiring to hear him talk about the rewards of accepting Jesus as your Savior.”

“How do you know him?”

“Funny thing, but it’s Miss Ruby who introduced us.”

“Oh, is he—is he black?”

Charlie grinned. “You ought to see the look on your face. No, Miss Racially Enlightened, he’s not black.”

“I didn’t say it’s bad if he is, I was just wondering. I assume, from the way you’re talking, that he’s a born- again Christian?”

Charlie looked amused. “Nothing wrong with glorifying God, sweetheart. When you’re around Reverend Randy, you really feel the presence of Christ.”

There were several possible ways Charlie might have reacted to my appearance at the ballpark, several moods I might have found him in—conciliatory or sulky, warm or blase—but nothing, nothing in all the years I had known him, had prepared me for this. Charlie, my Charlie, had found religion? I knew it could happen to people, but he was the last one I’d have imagined. And yet if it was keeping him from drinking, if it was encouraging him to take responsibility for his own behavior . . . I do not deny that I felt a strong skepticism that afternoon, but I suppressed it, chalking it up to nothing more than my own snobbishness. Most people I knew attended church; no one I knew then was born-again. But hadn’t I learned, over and over, that the world was larger and more complex than I’d once imagined, and wasn’t this lesson an essentially positive one?

I said, “It wouldn’t be a sin for a wife to kiss her husband right now, would it?” The question had hardly left my mouth when Charlie stood to embrace me. To have him back in my arms, that body I knew, the height, the scent, the skin and hair and clothes—what a great relief, how aligned my life felt for the first time not just in weeks but in years. Against my ear, Charlie whispered, “You have no idea how much I missed you.”