American Wife

The house was white with green shutters; it seemed a house where you’d have an unremarkably happy childhood. A swing hung unmoving on the front porch, and a red barn sat a few dozen yards back, chickens waddling in front of its open double doors. No cars were visible, only a decrepit red pickup truck of the sort farm families kept for driving around their own land but didn’t use on the roads. Holding the envelope, I walked up three steps to the porch. I set the envelope between the screen door and the wooden door and hoped neither Mr. nor Mrs. Imhof would step on it as they entered the house. I will never be able to express to you how sorry I am, I had written on the card. I know that I have caused you great pain. If there was anything in the world I could do to change what happened, I would. I had written five drafts of the note; one had included the line I will spend the rest of my life trying to make up for my actions, but I’d cut that part because I feared it emphasized that I had a life still to live. This pendant is something of mine Andrew once told me he liked, so I thought it might comfort you to have it, I had written in conclusion, and this was the reason I was delivering the note rather than mailing it; I’d removed the silver heart from its chain before inserting it in the envelope.

I was not quite back to the car when I heard a sound behind me, the lift and release of a door opening, and I whirled around mostly in terror and also, just a little, in hope; under my surprise and alarm was the irrational idea that it might be Andrew himself. Even when I was facing the house again, the difficulty of seeing the features of the figure behind the screen prolonged this glimmering impossibility. And then I realized it was Pete Imhof. Of course it wasn’t Andrew.

He didn’t open the screen door right away, but stood there for several beats, watching me, I suppose. I was pretty sure he wasn’t wearing a shirt. At last, pointing, I called out, “I left a note.” And then, absurdly, with my palm against my chest, “It’s Alice Lindgren.”

He pushed the screen door open, and because it seemed like I ought to, I walked toward him, reclimbing the steps, standing before him on the porch. He was indeed shirtless—he was wearing light brown corduroys, no socks, and no shoes—and though I tried to avert my eyes, I noticed the dark hair covering his chest. It was heavier around his nipples, which were broad and ruddy, and it thickened in a line down his sternum to his navel, and then down farther, where he had a pinch of flesh hanging over the waist of his pants. His arms were also lined with dark hair, except at the tops, where he was visibly muscular. My father, who was the only man I’d seen shirtless on a regular basis, including the previous summer at the motel pool in St. Ignace, was muscular, too—at five-nine, he had a compact muscularity—but his chest was white and almost hairless.

“My parents aren’t here,” Pete said. “They’re at church.” His face was stubbly and puffy. I had thought often of Mr. and Mrs. Imhof during the last few weeks, but the truth was that I had hardly considered Pete. I hadn’t even been sure that he still lived in Riley, though I realized in this moment that the car I’d plowed into had most likely been his.

“I thought—” I hesitated. “It seemed like it would be better if I came when they weren’t around. I’m sorry if I woke you up.” And then, predictably, there was the silent echo of the bigger apology I owed him: I’m sorry I killed your brother.

“You didn’t wake me up,” Pete said.

I looked down (there even was dark hair on his bare toes) and then up again at his eyes, hazel, like Andrew’s. “I’m sorry,” I said, and we held each other’s gaze, and then I said, “for what I did,” and to keep from crying, I looked down and pressed together my thumbs and forefingers. I couldn’t cry in front of an Imhof.

“Everyone knows that,” Pete said.

I looked up.

“Everyone knows you’re sorry.” His voice was neither harsh nor compassionate; it was matter-of-fact. And though I don’t think he doubted my sincerity, I felt a wish to convince him of it that seemed in itself insincere. “You don’t have to write my parents a letter,” he said. “They already know. My mother feels bad for you.”

“Should I take it with me?”

He shrugged. We both were silent for almost a minute. Finally, he said, “Are you waiting for me to invite you in?” I was about to say no when he added, “You can do what you want,” and he turned and walked back into the house. I followed him. Not by a lot but by a little bit, it seemed less awkward than just leaving.

No lights were on inside, and as we passed a dim living room, I observed a stone fireplace, a settee covered in navy blue velvet, and an old-looking upright piano. A wooden staircase with a shiny banister rose from the first-floor hall, but we took a second staircase, cramped and carpeted, that we entered from the kitchen. At the top of the steps were two doors, one closed and one open, and in the room with the open door was the first lit lamp I’d seen in the entire house. It was a small room with a large bureau, a little desk, a single bed (this was unmade, the white sheets and brown spread rumpled at its foot, a paperback book open and facedown against the mattress), and a nightstand on which rested the lamp and an ashtray.

As he sat on the bed, I stayed in the doorway and pointed. “I read that.” The book was Atlas Shrugged.

“It’s interesting, but it’s too long,” he said.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t say it was my favorite.”

He was looking at me, not speaking. Then he patted the space on the bed next to him and said, “Why don’t you come over here?”

I swallowed and stepped forward. It is important for me to say that I was complicit—I had followed him into the house and up the stairs. None of it was premeditated, but I was complicit. When we were sitting next to each other, I don’t think more than a second or two had passed before his mouth was on mine, his hungry, pushy, wet, sour mouth, moving in a way that seemed too desperate to be called kissing, and no more than a few seconds had passed after that before he set his fingers firmly around my right breast, squeezing and releasing and squeezing again. Although his desire was stronger than mine, and his strength was greater—although he was already shirtless—I was not afraid. What I felt was enormous relief. I’d been trying so hard these past few weeks to prop myself up, to act the way I was supposed to and try to take the first small steps toward compensating for my terrible error, and now I was only submitting. I wasn’t being watched or talked about or gently queried, not condemned or accommodated. I was being asked for something, something wrong, which another person wanted, and I could give it to him.

He had reached beneath my blouse and under my bra, and because it seemed that the buttons on the blouse might pop otherwise, I unfastened them. When I wore nothing on top, he pushed me down on the mattress, straddled me, and leaned forward to roll his face between my breasts, pressing them against his cheeks and licking my nipples, his stubble rubbing not unpleasantly over my skin, and the more he grabbed and thrashed, the more the grabbing and thrashing seemed to stir rather than satisfy his desire. He pulled off my pants and underwear at the same time—I was wearing blue jeans, and he had to unbutton and unzip them first—and then I was naked except