American Wife

compound appeared on our right, a grouping of houses whose sizes and layout were similar to those of the Blackwells. Apparently, Charlie’s family owned the northern-most plot of land; at the next large house, a throng of men, women, and children was emerging, led by a silver-haired octogenarian who dragged his right foot, leaned on a hooked cane of dark wood, and wore navy blue pants embroidered with little green turtles. “Harold, I won’t have you eating all the sweet-potato puffs,” he called in a plummy tone, and Harold Blackwell called back, “Wouldn’t dream of it, Rumpus!” Or at least this was what I thought Harold said, but I doubted my own ears until I ended up next to this same man in the clubhouse dining room. Four long tables extended north, south, east, and west from the center of the room—they were like a tremendous cross—and the tables were not divided by family, as I’d have imagined (I later realized they couldn’t have been, because there were four tables and five families), but rather, by the clucking, seemingly arbitrary instructions of the matriarchs. Mrs. Blackwell directed the grandchildren toward one table, her older sons and their wives to scattered points, and then she turned her attention to Charlie and me. “Chas, go sit by Mrs. deWolfe, because she’s dying to hear your theory about Jimmy Connors. Alice, you’re right here.” She pointed to the second-to-last place at one table. “I find it so tiresome when couples are seated side by side, don’t you?” I nodded, unable to remember the last place I’d been that had featured assigned seating. White linen covered the tables, and there were full place settings. The china and silverware all were nice enough, if far from new-looking, but the clubhouse as a whole shared the same worn quality I’d found in the Alamo—the curtains, of forest-green cotton, were faded, the hardwood floor was scratched, the chairs were of the not particularly comfortable wooden sort you might have found with a dormitory desk. A large vase of purple hydrangea sat at the intersection of the four tables, and over the mantel was a handsome oil painting of dark water: Lake Michigan, quite possibly.

When we’d all taken our seats—the men waited for the women, I observed, and the women first seated their children—the man next to me, the wearer of the turtle pants, extended his hand. “Rumpus Higginson,” he said.

“Alice Lindgren.” As we shook, I felt slightly proud of myself for not laughing, not even smiling or letting my lips twitch. (TWO weeks later, back in Madison, I picked up the Wisconsin State Journal to find a front-page article about the expansion of Wall Bank—a rival of Wisconsin State Bank & Trust, my father’s employer for over thirty years—and a small photo accompanied the article, a photo that was grainy and no larger than a postage stamp but still recognizable to me, of a man identified as Leslie J. Higginson; he was, apparently, the bank’s founder. This meant my father surely would have heard of him, though I doubted that my father had ever known he answered to Rumpus.)

We had a first course of vichyssoise served in shallow white bowls with a sprinkling of chives. Over the soup, Rumpus, or Mr. Higginson—really, I had little idea how to address anyone—said, “Have you spent much time in Door County, Allison?”

I did not correct him. “As a matter of fact, I haven’t made it here before, but it lives up to its reputation.”

“You couldn’t buy a better day.” Rumpus shook his head. “Absolutely gorgeous.”

On being assigned this seat, I had wondered if Mrs. Blackwell might be exiling me, but she had sat across the table and one over (to keep an eye on me? But no, I was being silly). She said then, “Rump, tell me it isn’t true about Cecily and Gordon. If they move to Los Angeles, we have no hope of seeing them again.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Rumpus protested. “A flight to California is nothing for an inveterate traveler like you, Priscilla.”

She shook her head. “The last time I was in Los Angeles, I said to myself, ‘Enough is enough.’ Terrible traffic, lousy food, and the staff at the Biltmore was appallingly incompetent. It claims to be a world-class city, but I find it quite provincial.” I know there are people who would not believe that a person from Wisconsin would dare to make such a remark; they are wrong. Mrs. Blackwell was saying, “I saw Cecily down in Sea Island last March, and I said, ‘Cecily, if the two of you even think of defecting to the West Coast, that’s the last you’ll hear from Harold and me.’ ”

“It’s really Gordon, though, isn’t it? I know he’s keen to cultivate relationships with Asian investors, which makes it a good deal more convenient. . . ”

The conversation proceeded in much this way as we moved on to the main course of broiled chicken. They discussed another couple named the Bancrofts who, I inferred, lived in Milwaukee, were renovating their kitchen, and had had the misfortune of hiring a feckless contractor; they discussed a couple named the LeGrands, whose son was in his second year of medical school at Dartmouth, though Mrs. Blackwell questioned whether he had “the goods”—she tapped her temple—to earn his degree (“His grades at UW were worse than Chas’s at Princeton!” she exclaimed); and finally, they discussed a Viennese cellist who had been playing with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra for the last several months and staying with Emily and Will Higginson, who were Rumpus’s son and daughter-in-law. “The Italians say that houseguests are like fish.” Mrs. Blackwell smirked. “After three days, they start to smell.” (Of course I quickly calculated that if Charlie and I had arrived on a Friday and were leaving on a Monday, that was no more than three days, was it? Though only I was a guest; Charlie was family.)

During the whole of dinner, I nodded at what seemed to be the appropriate intervals, I smiled when they smiled and laughed when they laughed, I even answered a question about my own taste in music—“Allison, do you prefer the classical or romantic era?” Rumpus inquired, and I said, “I’ve always enjoyed Mahler’s Fifth”—and at the same time, I became first tipsy and then solidly drunk in a way I had never been in my entire life. The waiters and waitresses, most of whom appeared to be about fourteen years old, refilled our wine-glasses frequently. On my second trip to the bathroom, I left just as coffee was being served with dessert, and the walls shifted as I walked.

There was a sitting room outside the dining room, and both its walls and those in the halls leading to the bathroom were densely covered with framed photos, the majority of them black-and-white: Halcyon inhabitants holding fish or playing tennis (the latter activity featured action shots and posed ones, with the players crossing their racquets in front of their bodies). One picture was of Mrs. Blackwell gripping the hand of a toddler who might well have been Charlie, standing on the porch of what I believed to be this very building. Mrs. Blackwell had not been beautiful, but she’d been dark-haired and attractive, the skin on her face smooth and unlined, a canny glint in her eye. On my return from the bathroom, I was studying the photo when a woman appeared from nowhere and threw herself into my arms. “I am so excited to meet you!” she cried. She spoke in a drawl that, like Charlie’s, was vaguely southern.

Even when she’d extracted herself from our nonmutual embrace, she held tightly to my upper arms, looking at me with great enthusiasm. She had white-blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, big front teeth, and tanned skin; she was pretty, but in this moment she was also far too physically close. “And I heard about that raunchy poem Arthur wrote, and I am mortified. I was with the baby in Gin Rummy, but if I had been there, I would never have let him do that. You must think we’re the most disgraceful family in the entire world.”

Then her eyes widened, and I do not exaggerate when I say that she proceeded to shriek. “Oh, you don’t even know who I am! Oh my stars!” She began to laugh, bringing a hand to her chest. “I’m Jadey! Arthur’s wife! I’m Jadey Blackwell! Oh, Alice, you have to forgive my terrible manners!”

“What a pleasure to meet you.” I could hear the expansiveness in my voice, a decidedly unfamiliar tone. “But