American Wife

happened to my body. You need to give me five years’ peace before I’m halfway ready to be a tart again.’ ”

I laughed, although I was conscious that voices carried on the lake. Furthermore, fifty yards away, one of the Higginsons was swimming laps perpendicular to their dock; I didn’t recognize which Higginson it was, but when we’d arrived, he’d paused midstroke to give us a wave.

Jadey and I were standing in water up to our chests, the lake dark blue now, and the sun in the western sky was heavy and yellow. Jadey let herself fall backward, dunking her shoulders and head, and when she reappeared, the shampoo was washed out; the wetness made her blond hair almost gold. She arched onto her back, kicking her feet to stay afloat. “How’s Maj treating you? She can be rough, right?”

I raised one finger to indicate a pause, then held my nose as I sank underwater. When I broke the surface, Jadey said, “She wanted a girl, is what they say, but she just kept having boys and finally—”

“Shhh!” I couldn’t stand it—not the information, which I was curious about, but the sense that other people, perhaps Mrs. Blackwell herself, might be overhearing the discussion.

Jadey laughed. “You really are a librarian.”

“No,” I was whispering, and I gestured toward the house. “I’m afraid they can—”

“Gotcha.” Jadey nodded, lowering her voice. “That’s the theory, anyway, why she doesn’t like girls—because she feels rejected by them. Do I sound like Sigmund Freud?” She was smiling in a self- deprecating way, and I wondered whether she had picked up the Blackwells’ habit of alternate teasing and self- mockery or whether she’d had the habit all along. She’d told me earlier that her parents were friends of the Blackwells, that she’d met Arthur when she was an eighth-grader and he was a senior in high school, though they hadn’t started dating until she was in college. She’d also told me—I’d asked—that Jadey was a nickname given at birth by her mother; her real name had been Jane Davenport Aigner, and of course she’d taken Blackwell as a surname when she married Arthur.

“Don’t be afraid of Maj, is my point,” Jadey said. “Her bark is worse than her bite.”

“I wouldn’t say I’m afraid of her.” I really wasn’t. Here in Halcyon, I was on her turf, but the more general notion I kept returning to was that there was something Mrs. Blackwell could bestow, some sort of approval, that did not fundamentally matter to me. It would have mattered to Dena. But all I wanted was adequately pleasant relations. I didn’t need to be close to Mrs. Blackwell, didn’t need to be one of her favorites. If she disliked me, it would be unsettling, but as long as she thought I was fine, that was enough. And over the course of the weekend, I’d had the sense that she was warming to me—late the previous afternoon, before the cocktail hour, she had walked past Charlie and me as we played Scrabble on the porch of the Alamo and had said, “Give him hell, Alice.”

Jadey began doing backstroke, thrusting one arm and then the other over her head, and I watched, impressed. I was not a strong swimmer. Although my father had taught me at Pine Lake in Riley, I couldn’t do much more than dog-paddle, and I could not have emulated Jadey’s backstroke or the smooth, confident slice of that Higginson family member’s freestyle.

Jadey flipped forward, coming back toward me. “You’re lucky that you’re older,” she said. “No offense. Just, you know, I was twenty-one when I married Arthur, and I was so easily intimidated. If Maj said boo to me, I’d be crying in the corner. Plus, Arthur used to—” At this point, unmistakably, we heard a baby’s wail. Jadey rolled her eyes. “Never have children,” she said, but already, she was swimming toward the ladder.

“Jadey,” I said, and she looked over her shoulder. “Thank you for being so nice about Friday night.”

ON SUNDAY EVENING, during the cocktail hour (if there was a day of the week the Blackwells abstained from drinking, I never saw it), I found myself for the first time talking one-on-one to Charlie’s brother Ed. Though we had been in the same general space several times in the past few days, I had hardly spoken to him directly. I’d felt aware of not wanting to seek him out just because he was the congressman—not that I secretly did want to seek him out, but I most certainly didn’t want to seem like I was. But he was the one who approached me on the porch, saying, “I hope you haven’t found us overwhelming.” (Of course, they took pride in their overwhelmingness, as all families that are both large and happy do.)

“No, I’ve had a wonderful time,” I said.

“I hear you’re an elementary school librarian. I confess that I don’t read as much as I’d like, but I do think teaching is a wonderful profession for women.”

“I imagine your sons are very strong students.” I wasn’t just trying to ingratiate myself—I’d noticed that Harry, Tommy, and Geoff were all articulate for their ages, and energetic but not wild.

“They’re good boys,” Ed said. “Ginger has her hands full, but there’s never a dull moment.” With his thinning hair, Ed bore the strongest resemblance to their father, I realized as he spoke. He also was the only Blackwell who was even slightly pudgy, and he wore glasses. “I’ll tell you that raising three sons makes me appreciate Maj even more in retrospect—I don’t know how she managed four.”

“Do you find it difficult going back and forth between Milwaukee and Washington?” So I’d taken the conversation in this direction after all; I hoped it was not a gauche error.

Ed shook his head. “It’s really a privilege,” he said. “To serve this country, Alice, what an honor. And my boys know it. When their daddy’s not around to tuck them in at night, it isn’t easy, but they’re proud that he’s out there protecting the interests of the people of Wisconsin.” As I listened to Ed, it struck me that his use of words that he obviously had used many times did not automatically make them untrue—weren’t they true if he believed them? That was my first thought; my second was Please, please don’t let Charlie win the election.

As if sensing my psychic betrayal of him, Charlie materialized beside us. “Eddie, you in for poker at ten? Gil deWolfe just called.”

“Alice, how do you feel about consorting with a gambling man?” Ed pulled his glasses down to the tip of his nose and looked over them with mock seriousness. “Is this something you approve of?”

“The only poker Alice plays is strip poker,” Charlie said, and I said, “Charlie!”

Ed laughed, pointing at his brother. “You’ve got to guard your wallet with this one, or he’ll rob you blind. Now, what’s this about?” Ed’s middle son, Tommy, had approached, in tears, and he announced mournfully, “Drew is hogging the Slinky.”

Ed shrugged at Charlie and me. “Duty calls.”