American Wife

too soon, but it’s not for us to ask why.”

Because she’d been having trouble sleeping, she told me, her mother had arranged for her to meet with their priest, and Father Krauss had helped her see that it was all part of God’s plan. “You should talk to your pastor,” she said.

I said nothing, and then she said, “You’re looking at my sideburn stubble, aren’t you?”

“I wasn’t looking at anything.”

“Nancy said I should just grow them out, but how many months will that take? Three?”

I hadn’t told Dena about Andrew’s brother, and I couldn’t. It was not a juicy tidbit, not even a moral quandary for us to debate; it was unspeakable.

“Your sideburns look fine,” I said.

WHEN MY FAMILY walked to Calvary Lutheran that Sunday, I drove back to the Imhofs’ farm. I knocked on the door, and Pete took so long to answer that I decided he wasn’t home, but I knocked once more anyway, for thoroughness. The previous night, the temperature had dropped to the low forties, and I wore a coat.

When he opened the door, he said, “That was stupid of you to come out here. What if my parents were home?”

“You said they went to Racine.”

“I didn’t say when they were coming back.”

“Should I leave?”

He gave me a surly look. “If you’re already here, you might as well come inside.” He turned and headed back toward the kitchen, and as I had both times before, I followed him.

In addition to scrambling what had to be five or six eggs, he was frying sausage and toasting two pieces of bread, and as I watched, he poured himself a glass of orange juice. When he’d assembled all the food on a plate, he sat at the kitchen table, so I sat, too. I took off my coat, folding it and setting it on the chair next to me. Neither of us spoke until Pete had finished his food. He leaned back, folded his arms, and looked at me.

“Should we go upstairs?” I asked. Although it was a forward question, it seemed so obvious this was the next step that to say anything else would have been disingenuous. Besides, once we were in his bed, undressed and entangled, I knew the dull hostility of his mood would recede.

But he ignored my suggestion and said, “What are your hopes and dreams, Alice? Think you’ll stay in Riley forever?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’d never stay here,” he said. “I’m moving to Milwaukee or Chicago to make something of myself.”

I was, of course, too young to know there’s no surer sign of a man who won’t make something of himself than his repeated assertions that he will, and I also was bewildered by why we were having this conversation. The wish to go upstairs was like a bar of gold hovering vertically inside my chest. “I went to Chicago with my grandmother,” I said.

“Yeah? Congratulations.” Though his comment had its desired effect—it made me feel foolish—I couldn’t tell if it meant Pete himself had or hadn’t been. “I could take over the farm, but farming is for chumps,” he continued. “I had to get up at six this morning to feed the chickens. You break your back in the fields, live at the mercy of the weather, and for what? I’m looking for a white-collar job, business or banking. Andy liked it here, but I never understood why.”

We both were quiet. I don’t think he’d meant to mention his brother, I think he’d temporarily forgotten my connection to Andrew or perhaps he’d even forgotten Andrew’s death.

All this time, there had been no light on in the kitchen, and we sat there in the gloomy quiet. In an unfriendly voice, he said, “Come here.” I stood and walked around the table. He was wearing the same tan corduroys from before and a sweater with wide black and red stripes. “Get on your knees,” he said.

When I was kneeling in front of him, I said, “Like this?”

Sarcastically, he said, “Pretend you’re in church.”

He held my gaze a she unbuttoned his pants, unzipped them, and slid them to his ankles along with his white jockey shorts. His penis looked shockingly small, but he took my hand and brought it toward him and said, “Move it around and rub it,” and soon his erection had sprung to life. “Come in closer,” he said. “Now put it in your mouth.” Even as he spoke, he was cupping my head with one hand, pulling me in.

Years before, in sixth grade, my classmate Roy Ziemniak, our dentist’s son, had described this act to Dena and me, and I hadn’t known whether to believe him. He had apparently been telling the truth.

I gagged twice in the first minute, and then I tried to keep a rhythm, up and down, and I thought, I’ll count to twenty-five, and I made sure to count with Mississippis in between so real seconds were passing: One Mississippi, two Mississippi . . . Above me, I could hear Pete sighing increasingly deeply. After thirty-four seconds, I raised my head. His eyes were closed, but he opened them quickly, and his voice sounded half sleepy and half desperate—it did not sound cruel—when he said, “No, you have to finish.”

When I’d resumed, I began to cry. I didn’t want him to notice, and I don’t think he did, preoccupied as he was; there was a lot of wetness down there already because I was drooling from not swallowing. When at last he erupted into my mouth, I quickly pulled back my head, and most of it dribbled onto his pale, hairy thighs. There was only a little I wiped from the edge of my lips, a tiny bit that might have gone down my throat. He leaned over to pull up his jockey shorts and trousers, and I bent my head, my tears flowing rapid and hot and unobstructed. Perhaps thirty more seconds had passed when he said, “Are you crying?”

I’d been sitting with my knees forward and my rear end balanced against my heels, and I shifted then so my rear end was on the floor and my knees were a tent. I crossed my arms, leaned my face into them, and wept so hard my shoulders shook.

“What’s wrong with you?” I heard Pete say.